Heart of a Friend
by ForThoseWhoLikeToMoveItMoveIt
Summary: It was the simplest thing to be spoken, but for some reason he just couldn't get it out until the end. SkipperxHans fic.
1. Prologue

_**Hoboken Zoo.**_

_**Tuesday, April 14th, 2012. 20:43 hours. (And for the NancyCats out there, that's about 8:43pm.)**_

It was a normal Tuesday night; the wind blew cool and crisp, even blowing a few leaves through the air. At night, the Hoboken zoo was dark and quiet. The whole zoo seemed to be deserted of all life, the golden gates rattled along with the gusts of wind blowing against them.

The place wasn't really deserted. All the animal inhabitants were dormant for the night, sleeping away in their remote habitats. They didn't know what was below them, and to be honest they probably couldn't have cared less.

The only disturbance in the area was ll,000 meters and 7 miles below the zoo, and then an estimated 500 feet out into the ocean. No one could hear the disturbance however, in fact no one above land would have been able to hear it at all. Up top it was silent, save for the usual Hoboken mobs and rampaging news anchors yielding wrenches. Then the crackling of trash fires burning a light in the dark.

But 500 feet to the east of the Hoboken zoo, and 7 miles down to the deep depths of the ocean inside of an undetected undersea lair, a widescreen television was playing rather loudly inside of a 'cutesy' little living room-like environment.

A Dane sat on the couch, thoroughly entertained by the rolling film in front of him.

"Ha ha ha ha!" Hans the Puffin laughed and with his wing he took another scoopful of popcorn from a blue floral bowl. The man on the TV got hit by another car and the puffin found that he had had enough of this show, deciding to change the channel. With a click of the remote the station changed from a comedy to an exhilarating car chase with explosions and fascinating hand to hand combat. "Ooh, I love this show!" The puffin exclaimed to himself, leaning back into the soft cushions of the couch. He loved this! Hospitality that was out of this world, free Wi-Fi, crustacean servants that tended to his every whim, and he could spy on Skipper all he wanted? ...He tended to abuse the use of that last one...but this was the life!

"Enjoying yourself?" asked a voice from the doorway.

"Yes! Very much, Dr. Mammal-fish!" Hans nodded, struggling to hold the remote properly in his wings to change the channel again. "And how is that evil scheming going for you?"

Dr. Blowhole eased into the living space on his Segway, maneuvering it in front of the couch where he let go of the handles and flopped back on the pinkish seat cushions. "I must say it's going quite well."

"That is good." Hans said, more focused on flipping through the channels on the television set. "So are you here to finally tell me the plans or- Oh, this show I like!" He put the remote down when he found a suitable station to his liking.

The dolphin rolled his eye. "I'm still having the plan looked over by the lobsters, they are buffing out the little kinks that could make it fail."

"The who? I sorry Dr. Mammal-fish but I was not listening to you."

Blowhole sighed. "The lobsters, you know, my henchmen, the red ones who bring you smo-o-oothies all the time!"

"Oh right, them! How are they doing?"

"They're fine…"

"That is good."

"I had to boil a few for insubordination against me, or speaking out of line, or just because they were _annoying me_, but other than that they're all fine."

Hans continued to look at the TV screen, horribly distracted by it. "That is so sad…it is always hard to lose a friend…yes…I remember when I lost one of my very good friends…it was very sad for Hans…" The puffin said in between trying to focus on the moving picture screen.

Blowhole huffed out of his blowhole. "Please tell me you aren't talking about my arch-foe being your friend, again."

"I forget that you don't like when I mention that. It is my bad Dr. Mammal-fi—"

"Stop calling me that!" The dolphin growled, making the small puffin flinch.

"And you don't like that either I'm assuming."

"No, I don't. It's no better than that ring_ed_-tailed imbecile calling me—"

"Fishy-face?" finished Hans. He blinked at the dolphin, quite unsure.

It irked Blowhole and he snatched the remote to turn off the television. The monitor flicked off and the surround speakers hummed down. The dolphin glared at him.

"What?" Hans asked, blinking at the cold stare he was receiving. "What did I do?"

"It isn't so much what you did do than it is what you _didn't_ do that is bugging me."

"What is it do you think that I did not do then?"

"Denmark!" barked Blowhole. "Remember?"

"Of course I did Denmark! It is my own home country! " Hans narrowed his eyes. The insult at how he could forget such a thing, stung him deep down in his puffin gut. "How could you think I've never been there done that?"

"That isn't what I meant."

"Then what is it?"

"What happened?"

"Uh…" The puffin rubbed the back of his neck. "What do you mean?" Hans tried to reach for the remote back. He wanted a distraction of some sort, maybe to get the dolphin to drop this particular subject he didn't really want to talk about.

Blowhole held the remote away from him and put it on the other side of the pretty pink couch. "Tell me what happened between you and Skipper in Denmark!" demanded the evil dolphin, annoyed.

"I already told you! It is a long story, one with—"

"—so many twists and chases and explosions! Ye-e-e-es, you've told me that! But you really haven't told me anything! I want to know what caused my nemesis to be booted out of a whole country, what made him so undeniably hated that he was never again given access to return…" Blowhole chuckled at the very thought of so much more people hating Skipper, wanting to hunt the despicable penguin down and seek out its last breath.

"Why do you want to know this so much?" asked the Dane.

"Because I really need to."

"Why do you need to?"

"Okay, I _have_ to then!"

"But _why_ Dr. Blowhole-fish?"

"Because it has something to do with the evil scheme I'm planning!" Blowhole finally snapped at the smaller animal. "And that is all I will tell you, now spill! Why is Skipper forbidden from entering Denmark?!"

Hans blinked. "Your evil plan has to do with open-faced sandwiches?"

"No! It has to do with Skipper! Our foe!"

"Your plan is to get Skipper to close another sandwich? I wouldn't go through with that. It didn't go well for him the first time. It's part of the reason he was banished from Denmark in the first place."

"Why was he banished from there?! There has to be more to it than just open-faced sandwiches!"

"There is, much more."

"Then why won't you tell me it?!"

"Why won't you tell me the evil plan that I am somehow involved in?" Hans brought up.

"I told you! It takes time and the kinks are being taken out of it!"

"Well, my story takes time too, and I too have to work out some kinks as well."

"How does it have kinks when it's already happened?" Blowhole asked, beyond irritated with the Danish puffin. "Mine has kinks because it's still being planned and hasn't happened yet! What I have to tell you is in the future, not the past!"

"You don't understand, Dr. Mammal-fish." Hans started pleading to the evil dolphin. "It's hard to bring up things we very much wish to forget…also to remember every detail or else you tell it wrong and then everything is out of perspective. I need more time, you see, to remember the whole story before I tell it to somebody else…"

Blowhole sighed. "Very well, you will receive more time." The dolphin said and tossed over the remote. "But when I'm ready to tell you the scheme, you better be ready to tell me the story. The whole story."

"Of course I will, I promise it to you!" Hans raised his right wing and crossed it over his small puffin heart.

"Good." Dr. Blowhole said with a relaxed sigh, allowing himself to sink back more into the couch. "Turn to the _Species World_ station, I hear there's a documentary playing about flightless birds and maybe that would help give us some weaknesses of those blasted peng-you-ins! Don't you worry Hans, we'll get Skipper and his team soon enough. Then we will get our revenge once and for all…!" He cackled and told him to turn again. "Seriously, we already missed crucial segments. We wouldn't want to miss anymore of the program."

"Yeah…" Hans pretended to think about it. "But actually…I was going to go up for a walk around the zoo. May I borrow your transport poddy please?"

"Fine…and it's a pod! Not a potty! Doesn't even look like one of those…" Blowhole muttered.

"Thank you~!" Hans said in a sing-song voice and dashed quickly out of the room.

Dr. Blowhole shook his head and turned to the documentary he wanted. "Demented puffin…" The dolphin muttered into the empty room.

* * *

_**Outskirts of the Hoboken Zoo. Underwater Lair.**_

Hans slipped out of the living part of the underground lair and back into the lab part of it. There, lobsters crawled around every corner. Some had stacks of papers, others had test tubes and machinery, they talked as they worked. This was a normal sight for the puffin, he has been staying with the dolphin doctor for a while now until their plan was ready to go through with.

Actually, it was more of Dr. Blowhole's plan because the dolphin had yet to tell him about it, just like how he has yet to tell the dolphin about what happened in Denmark. It's not that he had any issues with Blowhole. The two got along alright. The dolphin was a bit hostile and annoyed with him at first, also the puffin was a bit cautious of him but soon they had gotten used to having each other around. They weren't friends really, but they both had a past with Skipper so that was reason enough for them to live and work together. That was Blowhole's logic anyway. Han's didn't really care.

The two resided in Hoboken now, in the zoo. The puffin normally went off into the zoo when it opened, but the dolphin just stayed in the underwater lair all the time, only coming close to the zoo to call the puffin down back to the lair for things he couldn't do himself. Blowhole could handle most things on his own and he did, so this left Hans with almost nothing to do while the dolphin did all the work. This also left the puffin with an excessive amount of time to do thinking. He hated what he thought about. About his life, about what he was doing in said life, about what he wasn't doing in said said life, about his home he was ousted out of, and then his thoughts always brought him back to one thing.

Skipper.

Why couldn't he stop thinking about that dream crushing, friendship rejecting, paranoid and frustrating penguin? Why?

He'd tried to talk about his frienemy with the dolphin, but Blowhole would just talk about destroying him and crushing him and all those things. Blowhole would speak of how it would be for them once Skipper was long gone. Once the penguin was out of the picture, they could do anything. They could flood the world if they wanted.

Flooding the world wasn't something he was entirely sure about doing. He was a bird and he was rendered unable to fly because he had his wings clipped in captivity. He wasn't even sure he'd be able to survive if the entire earth was flooded. He made a note to bring that up to the dolphin later on when he got back. If he got back…No, that thought was ridiculous. Of course he'd come back. He hoped he'd come back better off than he was before, maybe more refreshed or settled instead of stuck and floating around like a particle.

The puffin took the red glass elevator up to another room where he got out in the room used to hold various items of transportation. There were Segway's of different models and some new, others broken down and rusty. There were escape pods and mobile pods, some that could accommodate both land and water.

He looked them all over with much thought on each vehicle. He thought about hijacking a Segway and taking it out for a test drive, but the dolphin might find out and he didn't feel like being thrown in a crockpot tonight so he took one of the pods like he told Blowhole he would.

Hans opened up one of them and jumped in, activating it by pressing on a button with the tip of his wing. "This is nice, and it is so roomy too!" And he was right, his small puffin body made him barely able to see the windshield after he closed it. Whereas Blowhole's larger dolphin body made the space very cramped and too small for proper fit. "Push!" He announced as he pressed down on another button. "I push you so much, you naughty pod..." cooed the puffin to the machine.

The red transparent pod started rolling to a certain spot on the floor that gave way underneath it. The pod was then shoved out into the ocean where it floated to the top and then started off towards the city.


	2. Of Silly Names and Imaginable Dames

_**Central Park Zoo.**_

"Hey! You! Smarty-penguin!"

"Yes?" Kowalski sighed his response. It did bother him quite a lot that no matter how long they've been neighbors, the lemur still refused to recognize his name, save for the Love-U-Laser incident where the lemur wanted to pound him with 'righty' and 'other righty'. He also noted that the ring-tailed lemur's fists were on the furry side. Just a side note however.

"Where are you silly stupid-y penguins going?" King Julien demanded. "You should be on your way to be attending my royal party!"

"Sorry ringtail, not tonight." Skipper told him. "We have a lot planned for tomorrow. We can't afford to lose any energy from lack of sleep, especially not for some silly party."

"Come on, Skippah. Can't we just drop by for a little bit?" Private begged.

"Sure, Private. We can stop by for a little bit…" Skipper started. "But that little drop by may very well cost you your life!"

"My…my life?" Private gulped.

"Tomorrow when we're out and about, and when you need that tiny-" Skipper demonstrated 'tiny' with his flipper. "-extra ounce of energy, and you don't have it because you wasted precious seconds of sweet slumber…Well then…I must say it's been an honor serving with you. It'll be Manfredi and Johnson all over again!" The leader threw his hands up.

Rico hacked up a gravestone that read _'Manfredi & Johnson'_. Then the weapons expert turned it over to the other side that read '_Private'_.

Private shook and squeaked in sudden fear.

"Come on, boys." Skipper started walking off towards the penguin habitat.

Rico followed the leader obediently on a belly slide.

"Maybe next time, Julien." Private said and did the same.

Kowalski groaned. "Is it too much for you to at least learn _my_ name? You know everyone else's!" The scientist complained before moping away.

"Hmph!" Julien put his hands on his lemur hips.

"Forget them, your majesty." Maurice tried to lighten the king's mood. The aye-aye lemur held a smoothie in his hand. "You should know how those penguins are by now."

"It is not that they are not being able to attend my party that is bugging me, it is what they have said about it!" Julien snatched the smoothie cup away from Maurice who was about to drink out of it. "My party is not some, and it is definitely not being de silly! They are de only _'some silly'_ ones around here!"

"I'm sure Skipper and the others are just overtired. A brother does need his sleep every once in a while."

"De bossy flatty penguin! He is de reason I am having three less guests at my party than I am supposed to be having there! It is all _his_ fault!"

"Well, if you put it that way, I guess…yeah, it is his fault. He told them to go to bed." Maurice shrugged.

Julien crossed his arms and bitterly plopped himself on the ground. "I hope something terrible is to be happening to him."

"Oh come on, surely you don't mean that."

"Well you are wrong! I am to be meaning it! By order of de _great_ sky spirits, I am wishing for de worst-est thing possib-ality to happen to de bossy party-lessening penguin! I hope that something he is not expecting to grab ahold of him, and cling to him FOREVA! And never ever never to be letting go!" Julien said while pretending to grab ahold of something and wringing its neck. "I demand he be cursed! There, I have said it, and I have meant it! But who is this _Shirley_ you speak of? She sounds nice. As your king, I order you to show her to me!"

Mort walked by with a smoothie cup over his head, and his voice echoed inside of it. "I _like_ curses!"

Julien stood up. "Yes. So do I, that is why I said it. Now come on Maurice, my party is not going to be partying itself!"

Maurice nodded and followed the king back into the party, right after redirecting Mort the right way because the tiny lemur couldn't see.

"Maurice! Turn up the royal boomy-box! My booty is needing de beaty-_ness_!"

"Coming, King Julien!" Maurice called, taking a look back at the penguin habitat and shaking his head. He laughed. It was a good thing no one believed in King Julien's sky spirit mumbo jumbo or else whenever the king called upon them, there would be big trouble. He wouldn't even be able to imagine the chaos that would happen if Julien really did have some all-powerful gods listening to his every word. Luckily no curse the king has ever given has been proven to actually have effects, so odds are nothing horrible will happen to Skipper at all. Shrugging it all off, Maurice re-entered the party.

"Really though, who is this Shirley-lady Maurice?"


	3. Late Night Trysts

_**Penguin HQ.**_

"Night, night, Pri'ate!" Rico called to the youngest penguin, lying down.

Private smiled as he tucked himself in his bunk. "Goodnight Rico."

"Night, night, 'Walski!"

"Goodnight, Rico." The scientist replied.

"Night, Skipper!" Rico called.

"Goodnight, men." Skipper said. The leader had his hands rested behind his head. "I hope you all realize that we aren't machines, we do need rest if we want to function properly and if we want to be all that we can be..."

"Actually, Skipper..." Kowalski said down to the bottom bunk. "Even machines need some type of recharge every once in a while. There is no such thing as an infinite power source." He snorted his laugh. "I should know, I've tried to find one, countless times, but I just can't seem to be able to render the particular molecular power force strong enough to enable an entry way through the power cells inertial cerebral energy cores to—"

"Rico." Skipper ordered. "Tell Kowalski I said goodnight."

"Okay!" Rico said and jumped from his bunk to the very top one to hit the scientist on the head with a mallet. "Night 'Walski!"

"No, no, wait-! **AGH!**" Kowalski cried and then was out like a light. He started lightly snoring seconds later.

"How cute!" Skipper cooed, and then rolled over. "Goodnight, boys."

Rico climbed past Private's bunk to get back to his own.

"Goodnight, Skippah." Private said and immediately closed his eyes, not wanting Skipper to get a chance to _'say goodnight'_ to him.

The lights went out and it was completely silent in their HQ. All the little penguins slept soundly and successfully, that is all except one, ironically.

Skipper turned over in his bunk and closed his eyes, unsatisfied he started beating his pillow and then turned over again. He tried everything to get to sleep, sleeping upside down, counting the weapons in Rico's stomach, turning over, flipping his pillow to the cold side, turning over again, flipping his pillow to the other cold side once the other other cold side ran out, even thinking about one of Kowalski's boring science speeches! But nothing was working.

"UGH! I just GOTTA get some sleep!" Skipper sat up in his bunk, having enough and feeling completely fed up. He jumped down from his bed and looked up at his sleeping team. "Private! Wake up, soldier!" The leader commanded but the little penguin didn't respond to him. "On your feet, now!" He pointed down to the ground, and again no response from his youngest soldier. "I demand you wake up and fix me some love stuff to help me fall asleep! …Either that or _hyper-cute _me or something…whatever works..."

Private sat up for a second, drowsily looked at the leader and then flopped back down into his pillow.

"Urgh!" Skipper groaned. "If that isn't insubordination then I don't know what is!" He gave up on the private and looked up one bunk to the snoozing scientist. "Kowalski! Up and at it, and bore me into slumber with one of your harebrained, breaking the laws of nature, science schemes!"

Kowalski twitched in his bunk.

"Do you hear me, soldier?! That's an order!"

Kowalski then, in his sleep, pulled out a small dolphin toy from under his pillow.

"What the-" Skipper stared in shock. "Kowalski!"

"Yes, my angelic mammal of matrimony?" Kowalski said deliriously, hugging the doll close to his feathers. The scientist stroked the plushy lovingly. "You're oddly furry for a dolphin…" He mumbled and then came the creepy part. He started kissing the dolphin toy.

Skipper covered his own eyes with his flipper. "Okay, forget it! I'll get myself to sleep some other way!" He said and turned away from that bunk. The leader walked up to Rico's bunk and tapped the weapons expert on the shoulder. Knowing he probably wasn't going to have any luck waking his last operative, he tried anyway for fun. "Rico, I can't sleep. I order you to wake up this instant and knock me unconscious."

"Alright." Rico surprised the leader by jumping up with full intentions on following the order given. He regurgitated a hammer.

"No, no!" Skipper covered his head to protect it.

Rico stopped the hammer from coming down.

"That's alright…really…" Skipper took the hammer and set it down on the ground. "I think I'll just go for a midnight stroll until I'm ready to fall asleep. You have a flashlight?"

"Uh-huh. Hold on." Rico croaked out and started coughing until he choked up a flashlight, handing it to the leader. "Flagh'light."

"Thank you my compadre. I'll be back in a bit."

"Careful. Skipper." Rico instructed.

"Aren't I always?" Skipper grinned in the maniac's direction and turned on the flashlight. "Just a quick once around the zoo won't cause my murder, but I'll take this hammer if it'll set your demented-psycho mind at ease." The leader took up the hammer and was climbing up the ladder. "I'll be back, but just in case, _you didn't see anything!_"

Rico frowned with disapproval.

"What?" Skipper asked. "Okay fine, you saw something. That way you could help track down my killer and avenge my both unruly and horribly _violent_ demise even if it kills all three of you…"

Rico blinked at him.

"Ha ha! doesn't that sound like fun?" He laughed heartedly. The skipper held a twisted grin, thrilled by the thoughts of his death being avenged by a gruesome, bloody battle in which no one ever returned and there's huge sacrifice in the ending. Those battles were his favorites. "Yeah, I like that…So you saw something anyhow. Goodnight, soldier."

Rico watched the hatch close and his leader disappear behind it. He shook his head and rolled over. He was always uneasy when Skipper went off on his own, always the one to freak out the most. He hated when he wasn't told when the leader left them. He was always dead against Skipper going off alone. Wasn't the credo dead against that? But tonight he didn't worry as much. Kowalski told him that the reason he always freaked out when the skipper left was because of some kind of 'separation anxiety' he got when the leader was gone too long. It was caused because of some long-term or repeated separation issues.

This basically meant that every time something went wrong with Skipper which could or very well have left them thinking that the leader wasn't coming back, had an effect on the weapon's expert.

All the times Skipper was in danger of not coming back to them had a traumatic effect on Rico's already messed up mind. Only Kowalski and Rico knew about it, although Private might have been able to guess it. Skipper simply wasn't told about the scientist's discovery. It was easier that way for the sake of the team, but not so much for Rico. He just had to live with the fact that one day Skipper was going to leave them, and nothing could be done about it.

Rico was already worried now, but the leader had a hammer. Nothing could possibly go wrong if there was a hammer involved. At least, that was his logic on things.

The demented penguin half smiled to himself. Yep, nothing could go wrong. "Night, Skipper…" Then all was silent and Rico's louder snore mixed in with that of Kowalski's and Private's.


	4. In the Nighttime

_**Central Park Zoo Grounds.**_

As promised he went for one walk around the zoo. All the habitats were dead silent, all except for the commotion coming from the lemur habitat. Some animals were still there at the party, others were back in their own habitats trying to get some sleep.

On his walk he passed Marlene's habitat, this one was empty and the lights were off. So the otter was still with the lemurs. He sighed and continued walking. The leader supposed he'd talk to Marlene about what he wanted some other time.

Skipper passed Bada and Bing's habitat. The two gorillas were fast asleep in two heaps on the ground. How those two slept through all that racket was beyond him. Then again, their heads were like rocks. Rocks didn't have ears.

He passed by Burt's habitat. The elephant wasn't there, so he was at the party too. Then he passed Roy's habitat. The rhino was there glaring disapprovingly at the blasting music being played. The leader tossed him a pair of earmuffs that landed perfectly on his head.

The rhino smiled at the fact that he was now deaf, and called louder than necessary to the penguin that saved him from not having a good night's sleep. _"Thank you Skipper!"_

Skipper nodded once and kept walking. He passed by Alice's office and the Zoovenir shop, the two places completely dark and voided.

He continued his trek around the whole zoo, passing the chameleons, flamingo habitat, kangaroo's, and polar bear's. None were home. After that he passed the koala and ostrich homes. The nocturnal koala bear lay fast asleep face-planted at the bottom of the tree and much to his dismay and annoyance, the ostrich wasn't sleeping and happened to notice him strolling by.

"Has Rico ever talked about me since the incident? What does he think of my legs? Does he find them _attractively long?_ Oh, does he miss me? I bet he does, doesn't he? I knew it! I miss him too! Tell him I miss him too, but keep it on the down low…I wouldn't want him to think I was insane or anything. Could you believe some people think that? Me, insane? Really? As if…" Pause. "Unless Rico likes insane, then I'm all about insanity! I'm _completely_ insane, I'm an utter whack-job! What do you think? Will you tell him I'm crazy? I want you to really sell it! I want you to pretend I'm insane so I can get Rico back! Will you do it?"

Skipper blinked after she was finally finished. "…Pretend…_RIGHT_…" The leader shook his head and walked away from her enclosure.

"Tell him to call me!" The ostrich called after him.

The leader 'tsk tsk'ed' and walked away. Soon he came to his round's end and was back in front of his own habitat, and the lemurs. The music blared to the max and silhouettes of all different shapes of animals danced around.

He sighed, finding himself tempted to enter the lemur habitat and stop by maybe. He felt a smidge bad about completely rejecting Julien's hospitality and rudely declining to come to his party. Skipper took a step towards it, thinking to apologize but he dismissed such an idea. Julien was probably just going to humiliate him in front of a majority of the zoo. So the penguin opted it to be better that he just wait until morning to go over and talk to ringtail. Skipper turned on his heel and hopped over the fence to his own habitat. Unbeknownst to the penguin, someone from the party had seen him.

Skipper smiled when he spotted the fish bowl that covered his entry way back to his boys. There was no one else in the world that he loved more than those three knuckleheads. He hoped they understood that all he did was for their behalf. He just wanted the best for his team, and that wasn't too much for him to bargain for. He'd show them that first thing in the morning, show how much he truly cared for his friends. He had to push them because he never wanted to lose them. If something ever went wrong and it cost him one of them, he really wouldn't know what he'd do. Maybe one day he'd be able to tell them that much.

The leader took another step towards the hatch before he was grabbed and pulled into the surrounding water. He swung his hammer and he felt his air cut off. The flashlight shattered on the concrete but the music raged on through the night.


	5. Trace

_**Central Park Zoo. 0800 hours.**_

Rico yawned as he stretched out in his bunk, waking up for the day. He sighed and laid back on the concrete slab. Hopefully he could catch a few more z's before he had to really get up. It was weird, Skipper always woke them early. He never woke up on his own…

"What are we going to do?" Private asked in a whisper, but Rico overheard anyway.

"I don't know…" Kowalski replied, equally whispering.

"It's weird, he's always here when we wake up…" Private said to the scientist. "It just isn't like him at all…"

"Hey 'Walski!"

"Oh, we're sorry Rico." Kowalski apologized as the weapons expert hopped down from the bunk beds. "We didn't mean to wake you."

"Itz 'ight." Rico shrugged.

"Did you sleep well?" Private asked him.

Rico nodded. "Wha go'n on?"

"Oh Rico, Skippah's missing!"

"Wha!" Rico yelled. "Sin' wen?"

"Well I don't know." Private admitted. "We woke up and he was gone. There wasn't a note or anything. I'm telling you, it isn't at all like him!"

Kowalski paced in front of the table. "It's not like he hasn't left on his own before. He does have his duties as a commander to go off on solo missions every once in awhile when he believes it's something us three couldn't handle."

"But Skippah always tells us where or what he's going to do!"

"Maybe something just came up out of the blue." Kowalski suggested.

"He still would have at least left us a note or _something_!" Private shouted out, flailing his arms. The young penguin sighed. "Sorry, I'm just worried…Skippah wouldn't just disappear unless something was seriously wrong…and he knows we never willingly let him go out alone. I know for a fact if one of us saw him leaving, completely alone, all by himself, we'd stop him! Wouldn't we?"

Rico blinked, realizing something. He face-flippered. "Uh-oh."

"Of course, Private!" Kowalski said. "We all know the credo. We would have stopped him if we saw him, that's probably why he didn't alert us that he was leaving. He knows us well enough to know that any one of us would have stopped him from going. Any one of us that saw him, going out that hatch, alone, in the middle of the night, without any backup, completely helpless to any attack…" The scientist trailed it all out, in over exaggerated detail for extra guilt composing effect. "…would have stopped him."

At this point Rico was banging his head against the concrete wall, shaking his head.

Private kept going, to the weapons expert's utter dismay. "Even if he asked one of us for help going out alone, or even if he gave us one of his smiles, we still wouldn't let him go on his own! Right?"

Kowalski stared at the private, questioning. "Smile, Private?"

Private nodded. "Skippah has such a nice smile…"

Rico had his face in his flippers, being mentally beaten up about the situation and hating himself for it. This was his fault right? He let Skipper go out alone! He grumbled and made pitiful groans to himself. This wasn't noticed by the other two penguins.

"I just don't understand it." Kowalski said as he worked out the math on his abacus. The arithmetic was simple enough for him so he was finished with the results quickly. "There's only a 42% chance on average that an event would occur so drastically that Skipper would have to be called out so urgently, and then there's the 6% probability that Skipper would ever think to go see to it alone. There's still the remaining 1% that would be the decider on whether he would go off on his own or figure what the heck and take us with him which would be the normal 50% probability. What _abomination _could have made that 1% difference that added to his decision to go alone?"

"I' WA ME, OKA'Y?!" Rico finally blurted out. "Aw ma'n! Kabagmufadagdagahga!" The weapons expert complained loudly in gibberish. "Flagh'light!"

"You gave Skippah a flashlight?" Private gasped.

"Gmangangmnbadabado!" Rico added.

The private shook his head. "_And_ a hammer? How could you?"

"I'onno!" Rico said, and then added. "Smile?"

Private ignored him and turned. "We have to find him K'walski!"

"I know, I know…uh, what did Skipper say to you before he left, Rico?" Kowalski asked.

"_You din' see an-thin'!_" Rico imitated the leader's word from the night before.

"And you just let him go?!" Private yelled.

"Private _please!_" Kowalski scolded the younger penguin, going back to Rico. "What else did he say to you?"

"Good-night." Rico said. "Up hatch."

"Well what are we waiting for?!" Private said and was already halfway up the ladder, throwing the entrance open.

The other two followed him up onto the makeshift island in the middle of their habitat. The sun was up high and it was nice out, the morning accompanied by a steady breeze. Yet there were puddles about on the ground like it rained before. The concrete beneath them was still slightly moist.

Kowalski looked down, lifting his foot from the puddle he just stepped in. It was murky, kind of cloudy. It was a little thick, but less thick than mud. Brighter than mud too… "It must have rained last night…but I fail to see how all this muck got here. Unless Phil started throwing things again…" He shuddered in disgust, trying to wipe his foot off on the ground.

"K-K'walski…?" Private gulped.

"What is it Private?"

"Is uh…Is mud _supposed_ to be a dark crimson color?"

"Not that I'm aware of…Well not here anyway, some soil is reddish but not here in New York…why?"

"Well…I don't think we're in New York anymore K'walski!" Private whimpered out.

"Private what are you talking abou- _**OH GOOD GOLLY!**_" Kowalski shouted at the top of his lungs. His beak hung wide open at the sight before them.

Rico walked over, looked down and pointed. "Wa zat?"

"That's…That's a lot of blood…" Kowalski said, not breaking contact with the spreading red puddle.

"But what's it doing here?" Private asked. "K'walski…you don't think that it's- I mean that'd be ridiculous right? It…it couldn't be Skippah's…right?" The private said, and after a few long seconds of no response he nudged the scientist hard. "K'walski!"

"We don't know for sure…" The scientist mumbled.

"Don't say that!" Private yelled at him and slapped his arm.

"It's the truth!" Kowalski tried to tell the kid, rubbing his now sore flipper. He understood the denial. He didn't want it to be Skipper's blood at all either, but they had to face the facts. Right now they were one hundred percent clueless of anything that happened last night. For all they knew Skipper could be- …then the denial sat back in on him again. "I can do a DNA test in my lab…then we can know for certain if…" This was just too much blood. "We'll know _something_ at least…"

"Let's do it then." Private said, nodding.


	6. Further Investigations

**Penguin Habitat.**

"Let's do it then…" Private sighed. He knew they had to if they ever wanted to find out what happened to Skipper.

"Alright…" Kowalski sighed. "I'm going to need a swab of the blood off the ground."

Rico coughed up a Q-tip and handed it to Kowalski.

"Thank you Rico."

"It's alright," Rico mumbled.

Kowalski bent down to swipe the cotton across the ground, making a clean line across the red stain. "That should be enough to put in the scanner. It'll tell us exactly who all this blood belongs to but it'll take some time to process the DNA."

"How come in those cop shows Rico secretly watches that Skippah forbid him to, the normal tests like this don't take that long?" Private asked.

Rico whistled innocently.

Kowalski gave an eye roll. "Because unlike humans and our nefarious foe _Dr. Blowhole_, we don't exactly have the proper amount of funding to do things the same way or as_ quickly_ or _accurately_ as they can."

"Is this about the gold teeth thing again?" sighed Private.

"We could have used that money for valuable scientific research and much needed materials!" Kowalski complained. "Not for gold teeth of all things to enable the possibility of eating something as trivial as _apples_! Skipper doesn't even _like _apples! They make him absolutely ill!"

"But he didn't know he didn't like apples when he bought the teeth…" Private tried to defend. "And is that at all relevant right now?"

"Of course it isn't relevant right now! Skipper is M.I.A!" cried Kowalski. The scientist held his head. "I know it isn't relevant, I'm just—"

"Nerd-o!" shouted Rico.

"No Rico, I think he means that he's just worried." Private reasoned. "He misses Skippah, and so do we."

"_Skipper._" Rico moped sadly.

"Let's get this to the lab." Kowalski affirmed. "Come on Private, I could use your help down in the HQ."

"What about Rico?" Private asked as Kowalski led him to the fishbowl, or a better statement would be that the strategist started dragging him there.

"_Rico_ is going to go around the zoo and collect statements from everyone to see whether anyone saw anything or not." Kowalski stared at Rico. "Aren't you Rico?"

"He can't just go around interrogating everyone in the entire _zoo_!" exclaimed Private, waving his flippers around. "It'll take way too long and who knows what could become of Skippah by then!"

"Kablam-o!" cried Rico.

Private gasped in horror.

"_Rico_!" Kowalski glared.

Rico shrugged sheepishly. "Sorreh."

"Alright, alright." Kowalski sighed. "Rico will go talk to the lemurs and by the time he's done doing that, you and I will be done with the DNA test." He said gently to Private. "And we'll find Skipper."

"I do hope he's alright…" Private trailed off as he climbed down the ladder.

Rico sighed when he was finally alone up on the flow.

"_Ahem_."

Rico turned to see Kowalski staring at him expectantly from halfway out the passageway. He nodded. "Uh-huh. Aye, Walski!" Rico saluted before stalking off towards the lemur habitat.

Kowalski shook his head before going back down the hatch, closing the fishbowl.

* * *

**Lemur Habitat.**

"No, no, no! I do not want that one! It is too…_grape-like_." King Julien narrowed his eyes at the small round fruit. "Please be getting me something else! I am not liking de grapes!"

"What are you talking about, your majesty? You liked grapes yesterday! You went on and on about how much you loved them." Maurice reasoned.

"You need to stop living in de past Maurice. It is just distracting you on de now, and now I don't like grapes! Fetch me something _else_! Something that isn't a _grape_!"

Maurice sighed and stepped on Mort's feet. It acted as a lever and made the tiny lemur's mouth open like a waste basket. He tossed the grapes in and stepped back as Mort's mouth closed back.

"I _like_ grapes!" Mort said happily. "I could eat them _all_ _day_! But King Julien _hates _grapes, so I don't like them no more either!" The small lemur scowled at the idea of grapes even existing if King Julien didn't like them.

"What about this?" Maurice asked hopefully, holding up another kind of fruit.

"An apple? Are you being crazy?! I cannot be eating this! What is WRONG with you Maurice?! How could you be so _insensitive?!_"

"Huh? What did I do?" Maurice asked.

"Do you know who hates apples as much as I am to be loving them?" King Julien asked the aye-aye.

"Me!" Mort cried, jumping up and down. "I love your hatred, King Julien!"

"No! Not _you_ Mort! So shut up! You do not know who I am even speaking of!"

"Who _are _you speaking of, Julien?" Maurice squinted at the king of the lemurs.

"Nobody!" King Julien crossed his arms and slumped into his throne. "Be forgetting I was ever to be saying anything."

"Wait a minute…Is this about Skipper?"

"What? No, of course this is not about that silly penguin! What are you even saying Maurice, because I don't even know!"

"I know what this is all about…" Maurice smirked.

"No you do not. So shut-up."

"You're upset because Skipper didn't come to your party last night, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you are talking about…" King Julien said calmly, but then his mouth quivered and he cried out. "OKAY FINE! YOU HAVE BEEN CAUGHTING OF ME! Are you happy now Maurice?! ARE YOU?! Be telling me that you are happy, Maurice!" commanded King Julien.

"Uh…I'm happy?" Maurice blinked.

"How can you be happy at a time like this?!" King Julien shouted at him.

"But you just said—"

"Do not be telling me what I have said! That was in de past! WHY ARE YOU STUCK IN DE PAST, MAURICE?!"

"I—" Maurice started. "What?"

Firm knocking from below interrupted their dispute. The three lemurs blinked as the knocking persisted, none of them knowing exactly what it was.

"Well, aren't you going to answer the door?" Julien gestured to where the knocking was coming from.

Maurice started, "We don't have a—"

The knocking only got louder.

"Am I to be doing everything myself?" King Julien glared. "Why are you not getting de door? Why are you being so rude today?"

"Rude?!" Maurice exclaimed. "You're the one who—"

_Knock, knock, knock!_

"Get de _**door**_, Maurice! What is de matter with you?!"

"Alright already!" Maurice grumbled over to the edge of the rock platform. He peered over it and blinked unsurely. "Uh, who is it man?"

"Gamanchblamunjgavba!" came the reply.

Maurice turned to look over his shoulder. "I've never answered a door before, is that a sign to open it or lock it?"

"How am I to be knowing that?" King Julien answered. "But let him in anyway, he sounds very interesting!"

Maurice shrugged. "Come in!" He called down to the ground.

There was an affirmative grunt before Rico jumped up on the rock ledge.

"Whoa!" Maurice cried and tumbled backwards on his rump.

"Oh, crazy penguin, it is only you." Julien said. "How come nobody interesting ever comes to my kingdom?"

"_I _can be interesting!" Mort smiled.

"Well _I _can be coming down there and be kicking you far away if I wasn't so bummed out!" moped Julien.

Rico wound back his foot and kicked Mort up and out of the lemur habitat.

"_Wheeeeeeeeeeeee…!" _**CRASH!** _"I'm okay, King Julien!" _

"Whoa! You _are _very interesting! Please be doing more to make me even _more_ interested in you!" King Julien jumped down from his throne, eagerly bouncing in front of the scarred penguin.

Rico shook his head no.

"Why not?" Julien pouted.

"Skipper." grunted Rico.

"You silly penguin! That is not to be_ interesting_ me, that is to be making me feel even worse about de bossy penguin not coming to my party!"

Rico groaned in annoyance. "Skipper."

"Stop it! Now you are making me feel bad on purpose! You are being very mean to me!"

"Skipper." urged Rico.

"STOP IT!"

"Skipper!"

"Make him stop, Maurice!" wailed King Julien.

Maurice pushed past the cowering king. "What _about_ Skipper?"

"Skipper. Not here." Rico said.

"What, you mean he's gone?" Maurice asked, concerned.

Rico nodded.

"Oh no! It is being _my_ fault! I have forced him away with my awesome kingly curse-y-ness skills!" King Julien cried. "What have I done?!"

"See?" Rico asked then changed his way of asking so he could be better understood. "Saw?"

"Why in de heck are you speaking of seesaws at a time like this?!" King Julien shouted, throwing his arms down. "I have chased away de only flightless bird I have ever wanted to be my friend! It is all _Mort's _fault!"

Mort, who just came back from his forced flight over the entire zoo, started crying in shame. "I am _sorry_ King Julien!"

Maurice ignored the other two ecstatic lemurs and spoke to the penguin like he didn't hear them. "Come to think of it, last night I _did_ see Skipper about to come into the party, but it just looked like he changed his mind and went back to his own habitat instead." Maurice halted in his conversation and turned around to Julien. "Wait, did you just say you wanted Skipper to be your _friend_?"

Rico and Maurice both stared surprised at the self-proclaimed king.

"Eh…" King Julien blinked twice. He looked nervously between the two pairs of eyes on him before abruptly turning them to Mort. "…_Mort_! How could you…! How could you— uh…do de thing you did! You are a horrible person Mort! What de heck is being de matter with you?!"

Mort began sobbing again, throwing himself on the ground in front of the king's feet.

Maurice and Rico exchanged looks and then smirked at Julien's newly aired feelings towards the leader penguin.

"…And uh…get off de royal feet, yeah!" King Julien went on, not fooling anyone and his eyes darting back and forth. "How many times am I having to be saying it Mort?!"


	7. Much Ado about Lemurs

**Penguin HQ.**

"K'walski?" Private finally spoke up, the small penguin swinging his legs back and forth on top of the table. He'd been watching the scientist work for almost twenty minutes and hadn't been acknowledged once since they got down in the lab.

"Huh?" Kowalski responded. He didn't look up from his work. Being almost done with the samples and them almost ready to go into the scanner, he tried to remain focused so he wouldn't make a mistake. He kept his gaze downward. One wrong action and the DNA would become useless.

"I thought you said you needed my help." chirped Private.

"I do."

"Well why aren't I…you know…_helping_?"

"Oh, right." Kowalski's head snapped up and he starting thinking. "Uh…okay, come over here and hold this petri dish."

"Alright." smiled Private, happy he was finally doing something instead of just sitting around. If Skipper was out there, he wanted to help find him with whatever it took. If he had to do complicated sciences or even just sit around in order to get Skipper back then so be it! Although he'd much rather be doing _something _rather than nothing.

Kowalski reached out to give him the clear dish but drew back last second, warning him. "Be careful, Private."

"Aye, K'walski." Private's eyes widened a second after the words left his beak. That's what he always said to Skipper. _Oh dear._ He was so shocked that he jerked back his flipper. The result was the petri dish holding the readied DNA sample falling to the ground. The dish didn't shatter but the samples or whatever was in the dish dripped onto the concrete floor, therefore contaminating the DNA and rendering it useless. "I…I'm sorry K'walski…"

"It's alright. We do have a lot more where that small sample came from." Kowalski said without thought. He mentally scolded himself. He was an idiot! ...Which he knew he really wasn't. Him? Stupid? _Come on!_ But what kind of statement was THAT? It definitely wasn't comforting to think that there's an endless supply of your friend's blood upstairs in the front yard, all ready for use. It's even worse that he said this to Private! Rico would have laughed at it maybe, but _Private? _He's probably scarred the little guy for life! He was the one in charge right now. It was like that whenever Skipper couldn't perform duty, but he couldn't compete with Skipper! Skipper was like a father figure to the private. Why didn't he choose his words more carefully? What was he thinking? He tried to comfort Private the best way he could, even separating the little penguin from Rico. Now he was sure he was making things worse by pretending everything was going to be okay. Nothing was okay! Skipper was missing! How could anything possibly be okay!? How could he just pretend that!? "Private I…"

"Are we ever going to see Skippah again?"

"Of course we are! This is Skipper we're talking about! We all know that he can take care of himself. He can handle whatever's thrown at him."

"You're right." Private wiped away the tears from his eyes. "Skippah can handle anything, and he'll make whoever it is pay for making him have to leave us."

Kowalski smiled. "Of course he will. Now let's go get another DNA sample."

"Okay." nodded Private and started to the door.

"But uh, Private..?"

"Yeah?"

"_I'll _hold the dish this time."

"Aye, K'walski…"

* * *

**Lemur Habitat.**

"What do you mean Skipper's missing?!" Marlene shouted.

"I'onno!" Rico shrugged.

"He can't just disappear off the face of the earth like some freak disappearing act! He has to be somewhere!" The otter bawled. "How could he just be missing?!"

Rico shrugged again. "I'onno!"

Marlene groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Meanwhile, Maurice eyed King Julien.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Julien glared defensively. "I have already told you that I do not care!"

"Sure you don't, Julien." Maurice rolled his eyes, not at all convinced by the self-proclaimed king's act.

"I don't! I told you that these things happen. Sometimes in life, a penguin has a flashlight/hammer fight with somebody and ends up splashing in de water! I told you I don't care, Maurice! I am not feeling _guilty_ that de curse that I bestowed upon him has actually come true. I do not feel bad that something just _swooped _out of de sky and _grabbed _a hold of de Skipper and _yanked_ him into de water, knocking him into senselessness before making off with him in a sack like some goody bag on de ween of Hallo!"

By the time King Julien had finished speaking, everyone was staring at him wide eyed and with gaping mouths.

Marlene was first to react. "Okay…first of all, the holiday you're thinking of is called _Halloween_, okay? And second…._**WHAT?!**_" The otter screamed. "You saw all of this and did nothing!?"

"Silly otter, what was I supposed to do?"

"You could have _helped_ him or went to _get help_ or _something!_" Marlene yelled at the lemur. "How could you just let something like this happen?"

"I told you," Julien glanced over his fingernails. "These things happen sometimes, and there is nothing you can do to stop dem…What was I supposed to do? Jump in de middle of de struggle, cause attention, and magically save Skipper from his attacker?"

"Uh-huh!" exclaimed Rico.

"Yes!" Marlene yelled.

"You know, now dat I think about it, dat does seem like a reasonable thing to do. Maybe I should have done dat." Julien tapped his chin.

Marlene and Rico glared at him with their arms folded.

"What?" Julien asked. "Was what I did not do really _dat _bad?"

"Uh-huh!" Rico cried.

"Yeah!" Marlene nodded vigorously. "It kind of was!"

"You messed up." Maurice agreed.

"_Yay_ King Ju—" Mort began but Maurice shook his head at him. The smallest lemur frowned. "Boo King Julien…" Mort said in disappointment.

Julien gasped. "Mort? You are _booing _me?" The lemur king sniffed. "What have I done to deserve such treatments?"

"You saw Skipper being attacked and did nothing." Marlene informed him.

"Oh yeah." King Julien laughed. "I _did_ do dat."

"Ugh!" Marlene pushed past Julien, storming out of the habitat.

"Not cool ma'n!" Rico croaked and followed the otter.

"Oh come on! It is not _dat _bad! I could of sworn I have done much worse things than this. Haven't I, Maurice? I mean I _am _on de naughty list after all…" Julien said, smirking, and leaned on Maurice coolly.

Maurice shoved the king off and glared at him. "You were _removed_ from that list but I wouldn't be surprised if you got put right back on that thing. You've done a lot of bad things; being mean to Mort all the time, being selfish, and jumping on that fat guy-"

"De red night goblin." pointed out Julien.

"It don't matter!" Maurice shouted. "This has got to be the worst thing you have _ever_done, Julien." The aye-aye lemur shook his head and stalked off.

Julien blinked after him. He narrowed his eyes. "Fine! Be dat way! I don't need—" The king of the lemurs looked down. "…Mort?"

Mort looked up teary eyed. "Sorry King Julien!" Then he ran away.

King Julien stood alone in the center of his habitat, blinking in the direction his friends went. "I…am feeling something deep down in my totally ripped kingly chest…" The king thought aloud. "It is…" **_BURP! _**"Nope…dats not it…"


	8. Pandemic Across All Nations

_**Penguin HQ, Central Park Zoo, Lab. **_

"Steady, Private!"

"I can't be any steadier, K'walski!"

"Stop shaking!"

"I can't!" exclaimed Private. "Rico won't stop jumping! He's shaking the whole habitat up there!"

Kowalski gave an exasperated sigh as the second blood sample shattered on the ground. "There has _got_ to be an easier way of doing this…"

"Should I tell him to stop it?" Private suggested.

"Yes, and while you're at it, try to get another sample."

Private nodded and went for the lab door. "Alright."

"Wait, Private?"

"Yeah?"

"Get two," Kowalski instructed. "You know, just in case…and tell Rico to keep it down up there!" He called after the young penguin. "He's starting to give me cranium cramps."

"Mm hm." Private hummed nonchalantly. Honestly- and he didn't mean anything bad by this -but he was getting kind of sick of taking orders from Kowalski. He liked getting told what to do by Skipper. No one gave orders like Skipper, and no one slapped him like Skipper did. Come to think of it, Kowalski hadn't slapped him once since Skipper's been gone. If anything, Kowalski was treating him differently. He'd taken notice. The strategist was stern to Rico, but not to him and even separated him from Rico all day! What was that even about?

Kowalski was coddling him, he thought. Kowalski was treating him like a child, like he was the most fragile thing there was. Why? Did Kowalski see him as a lesser teammate? A lower rank than both him and Rico? He was, technically speaking. Kowalski was a lieutenant and he was sure Rico was of a higher rank than he was. He was still just a private, a young soldier. But that didn't mean he had to be babied around the way he was!

Since Skipper was absent from place as leader that duty fell onto Kowalski. So since Kowalski was moved up to leader, shouldn't they all be moved up in rank as well? That would mean that Rico would be moved up to lieutenant and he himself was now the weapon's specialist. But that wouldn't be right. He didn't know a single thing about weaponry, let alone storing a whole artillery inside his body. He couldn't perform that job, so that meant Rico stayed as weapon's specialist. So…by default…that meant _he _was the lieutenant now. _He _was second in command, and second in command didn't get mollycoddled!

Finally Private got up to the island, pulling himself upright on the concrete. The private watched Rico running ecstatically back and forth, screaming across their habitat. Private mumbled something, shaking his head before taking two cotton swabs and bending over to pick up more of the blood. He was knocked forward when Rico ran past him again. Private gasped as he almost fell face first into the water. He landed on the side of the island, catching the swabs of DNA before they fell into the surrounding water. He gave a sigh of relief and then turned to scowl at the still running penguin.

"Rico! You almost made me lose the DNA! K'walski told me to tell you to keep quiet! We can't work to find Skippah if you keep on— Woah!" cried Private as he was pulled to his feet. Rico shook him by the shoulders, babbling frantically.

"YABBLERABBLEREBAGDEGHAMO! _DEGHAMO_! DIN' DO AN'THIN!"

"Slow down! What is it that's got you acting this way? What's all this about Julien then?" Private asked.

"Gaberelbbarelbbaja!" Rico cried. "Lok down de'!"

"Look down where, Rico?"

"DE'!" yelled Rico, pointing down into the water.

Private peered down over the edge of the island. "Where? I don't see anything."

"RHI' _DE_'!" The psychotic penguin pointed repeatedly and finally something caught the private's attention.

"A hammer? What's a hammer doing at the bottom of our pool? And where did all this broken glass come from?" Private asked, finally taking to account the shattered fragments on the ground, most of them decorated red with little droplets.

"Flagh'light bro' en. Lok!"

"I'm looking, I'm looking! But what—" Private's eyes went their widest. "AHHHHHH! **K'WALSKI****!**"

* * *

"…K'WALSKI! …K'WALSKI! _**K'WAAAAALSKIIIIII…!**_"

Kowalski blinked and turned towards the lab door as it burst open. "Priva—OOF!"

"K'walski!" cried Private, landing on the strategist's stomach.

Kowalski picked his head up from painfully slapping against the lab floor. "What happened?" He groaned at the weight of the young penguin sitting on his lungs.

"The- The—! The flashlight—! It—! I- I mean—! And Julien just-!" Private broke off in frustration for the lemur king. "GAH!"

"Private, calm down! What is it?"

"There's blood all in the water, K'walski!" Private shouted. "And the flashlight, it's all busted!"

Kowalski looked at the private and something caught his eye. He gasped and pulled Private's wing closer to his view. "You're bleeding, Private."

"I am?" Private looked down at his flipper, turning it. He spotted a piece of glass sticking out of his feathers.

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so."

"Hold on, I'll take it out." Kowalski squinted to see the shards better.

Private winced as the scientist picked out the glass. He blinked at it. "Odd, it doesn't hurt as much as I thought taking glass out of a flipper would."

"Where'd you say all this glass came from again?"

"Ah!" Private suddenly gasps, remembering. "_**K'walski!**_"

"No need to yell, I am in fact right here. Approximately three inches below your face."

"Oh right," blinked Private. "…but K'walski!"

"What, Private? Tell me what you want to say, but slowly and comprehensible this time. And we must remain calm in this situation so absolutely no more screaming,"

Private nodded that he understood.

"The last thing we need is a screaming epidemic." Kowalski said.

"Screaming epidemic?" questioned Private.

"Yes, in which something bad happens and the only way to react to it is by screaming. That kind of reaction only ever makes everything worse. That is something we absolutely do not need to happen here. Wherever Skipper is, he's probably counting on us to figure this out and find him again. We're his team and it's what we have to do. So now, calmly and without anyone screaming, let's go over what it is you wanted to tell me..."

* * *

_**Topside. **_

Rico sat there shaking his head back and forth in his flippers. "WHY?!"

"Rico, there you are!" Marlene said. She hopped down onto the island. "Sorry for storming off earlier. I was just _furious _at Julien for what he did!"

"WHY?!" cried Rico.

Marlene blinked. "Well, because he's a jerk! How could he just see Skipper in danger and do nothing about it?"

Rico kept shaking his head in his flippers, ignoring the otter, still in his own world of despair.

"Anyway, have you seen Kowalski around? Or Private? Do they even know yet?"

"WHY?!" wailed Rico.

"Because…I think they deserve to know, don't you?" The otter asked.

"WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?! 'KIPPER?!" Rico shouted into the sky. " 'KIPPERRRRRRRRRRR?!"

Marlene took a step towards the psycho penguin. "Hey, are you okay? Rico, aw, come on…Everything will be alright. We just have to stay calm, keep a cool head, and—"

"_**WHAT DO YOU MEAN JULIEN SAW EVERYTHING AND DID NOTHING?!"**_ came Kowalski's shout from inside the HQ.

Marlene frowned. "Or not…"


	9. The Results Are In

**Penguin HQ Lab.**

"I can't believe Julien can be such a jerk!" complained Marlene, sitting on the table in the lab. "How could he just leave Skipper alone to something like that? What's his deal?"

Kowalski nodded at her words. The analyst focused between the otter and sterilizing the test tube to store the DNA sample. He used a small cleaning brush to clean the old chemical specks off the inside of the glass. "Well, he_ is_ Julien…" the analyst reasoned.

Marlene nodded. "Oh yeah, right." The otter understood that much. "But it's still completely horrible don't you think?"

"Yep," the analyst said. "I most certainly do. None of us are strangers to Julien's antics. This is normal behavior for him on a daily basis. So-"

"-so selfish and uncaring of anyone else but himself?" Marlene finished.

Kowalski nodded. "Precisely." the analyst rinsed off the tubes and tools.

"Hey guys, I really am sorry for Julien." Maurice said, the aye-aye sitting around the lab table with the rest of them, sitting next to Private. "He means well." The aye-aye said and received looks. "In his mind at least…" Maurice sighed.

"What's wrong with him anyway?" Marlene asked.

Maurice blinked. "What do you mean?"

"What's wrong with him?" Marlene repeated. "There's got to be something not right about him, right? I mean I can't be the _only one_ who thinks that."

Maurice shrugged, still not understanding where the otter was headed.

Kowalski sighed. "She's asking you if Julien has any mental defects or illnesses we most likely should have been warned about."

Private nodded. "I suppose it would have been nice to know beforehand if he did."

"Oh, that." Maurice understood what they were saying now. "Well, no, not one that was ever known back on Madagascar. But he _was _dropped out of the tree that one time…"

"At what age?" Kowalski asked.

Maurice blinked. "It was about a week or so before all of you except Marlene first arrived in Madagascar."

Kowalski whistled at how far off and ridiculous that statement was.

Private tilted his head. "That could be the reason he's the way he is. Couldn't it? Maurice, was Julien the same before we all met?"

Maurice nodded immediately. "Same old Julien, even way back then. Never any changes."

Marlene was exasperated. "Doesn't he know at least _some _difference between right and wrong? He's got to know some kind of knowledge besides the list of things he likes! He even forgets _those_ things! Did no one ever teach him anything?"

"Woah, woah, woah, hold on there!" Maurice stopped her, offended by what she said. "I've served Julien ever since the beginning, even while he was still in the royal stomach, and I admit he's high maintenance, but it isn't his fault. I tried to teach him the best I could, it's just nothing really stuck where it was supposed to, know what I'm sayin?"

"That doesn't change the fact that he basically left Skipper to die at the hands of some flashlight wielding maniac!" exclaimed Marlene.

"Die?!" Private gasped, covering his mouth with his flippers.

"'Ey!" Rico shouted, offended. "Ah z'orry, uh kay? Yabgabadabdab! Flagh'light!"

Marlene rolled her eyes. "Not you, Rico! I was talking about the guy Julien said he saw attack Skipper. He said it was used in the struggle, that and the hammer." The otter frowned, worried about Skipper. She wiped her wet eyes with the back of her paw. "Maybe that's where all the blood was from… I hope he's okay. I can't believe he's gone, it's so-"

Private frowned, interrupting the otter. "Excuse me, could we please not use such horrible words?"

Everyone in the HQ lab blinked, confused.

Kowalski responded. "Private, you know I always have that covered. We always cover your ear holes when adult things are about."

Marlene blinked. "Oh, I didn't know I cursed. Huh, must have let one slip. Sorry, Private."

"No, Marlene, it's not a curse word I was talking about." Private clarified. "I just wish you wouldn't say such negative words like die or gone. I know Skippah's alright out there, thinking about all of us being safe right now. I wouldn't dare to think any different. I don't think I even could."

"Aw, Private…" Marlene played with the feathers on his head. "Of course Skipper's still out there. I didn't mean anything by those words, I was just trying to get a point across, hey, Skipper's a fighter! I'm sure he's fine. The worst he could possibly be is angry. He's probably out there yelling at someone right now."

"I'd do anything to have Skippah yelling at me right now…" Private sighed sadly.

"He'll be back to yelling at you guys and ordering you around in no time." Marlene reassured. "Am I right?"

"I'm ready to test the DNA sample." Kowalski said. "As long as everyone respectively takes approximately ten paces back and makes absolutely no sudden movements, touches me, or even breathes in my direction."

Everyone in the lab looked at each other but didn't argue. Maurice and Marlene shrugged, taking the required ten steps back. Rico and Private nodded and did the same, backing away from the analyst and the table.

Kowalski nodded, satisfied. "This is the last specimen we have of the blood. If this gets messed up, we have nothing. The remainder that was up on the surface of our habitat was washed away by Alice. We cannot, I repeat, _cannot _lose this sample. It can't be knocked out of my flippers, contaminated, errored, or so much as having anything to do with any of you. I am going to pick up the dish, place in it the analyzer, wait exactly five minutes for it to process and then look at the results. None of you are to interfere with any of those processes, is that understood?"

Rico, Maurice, Marlene, and Private nodded in understanding of the strict precautions given, knowing that the analyst was deathly serious. This sample could NOT be messed up. This was absolutely serious and no mistakes or accidents must be had.

"Alright," Kowalski sighed, hovering his flippers over the table. "I am going to pick up the sample…" the analyst paused, looking around for any possible interruptions. "Any second now…" Kowalski's eyes darted between everyone again. "Almost…-"

Mort walked forward happily. "Can_ I_ help?"

"AHA!" Kowalski pointed at the small lemur triumphantly. "I knew there'd be something! Someone hold Mort!"

"Uhn it." Rico said and lifted the small lemur by its tail so it hung defenselessly in the air unable to cause any harm.

"I'm helping!" Mort smiled.

Kowalski looked around the room until he was satisfied with how safe it was. "I'm going to pick it up for real this time…any second now…going to pick it up…almooost going to-"

"Will you just get on with it?!" Marlene shouted.

"Fine! Excuse me for trying to be careful!" Kowalski picked back up the petri dish and started to make his way towards the small machine. He muttered angrily to himself as he scraped the DNA sample into the analyzing device. The analyst turned it on with the flip of a switch. "There, now we just have to wait a few moments for the machine to process the- _AHHH! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!_" Kowalski screamed at the top of his lungs.

"I'm helping find the bossy penguin!" Mort exclaimed as he stood on the small device, jumping on all the buttons.

"Rico! I thought you were _holding _him!" Kowalski groaned.

"Wha?" Rico snapped back to attention, he looked at his empty flippers. "Ey! Wea ee go?" the weapons expert saw the small lemur stomping on the machine and saw the glare he was receiving from the analyst. "Oh, Z'orry 'Walski…"

"Sorry?! That was the last sample we had! What are we supposed to do now!? Huh?" Kowalski yelled.

While Kowalski was busy yelling, Private made his way over to Mort and the analyzer. He placed the tiny lemur on the floor and took a cotton swab, wiping it against the bottom of the analyst's foot without Kowalski noticing. Private then put the cotton swab into the analyzer. The private tapped his foot patiently as he waited for the machine to finish.

"…I thought of everything!" Kowalski continued his scolding. "Every possible scenario where an error could have been made that would cause us to lose the blood sample and Mort was one of them! He was calculated for! How could he have still manage to mess up the-"

"_DNA sample analyzed." _the small machine said in a feminine computerized voice.

Kowalski gaped at the private and the machine. "What the- how in the…" the analyst stuttered. "How- how did you do that?"

Private shrugged. "You stepped on some of the DNA earlier so I just swabbed your feet."

"_Anyone_ could have done that!" Kowalski scowled.

Private blinked and shrugged again. "_You _didn't."

"I _know_ I didn't!" Kowalski shouted.

"Well why didn't you?" the private asked.

"Ugh…never mind…"

"Alright I guess, um, look at the results K'walski! What does it say? Hurry!" Private urged.

"Alright, alright, don't get your DNA molecules in a twist! I'm checking it!" Kowalski waddled over to read the results, peering into the screen.

"Careful!" Private instructed. "Don't twist them!"

Kowalski sighed at the young penguins cluelessness when it came to simple science. The analyst read the results, blinked and read them again. "Huh…well that's unexpected and climactic…"

"What is?" Private demanded, jumping on the lab floor in expectancy. "Did you find Skippah? Is he hurt? Where is he? We have to go get him!"

"Calm down, Private!" the analyst ordered. "This is just a DNA sample, not a crystal ball! Even if any of those things were a reality, I wouldn't be able to tell you them! This test only tells us whose blood we found and nothing more!"

Maurice stepped up. "So, what's it say?"

"Wea 'kipper?" Rico asked, adding in.

"Didn't I just say it wouldn't tell us where he is?" Kowalski sighed. "Whatever, anyway, it didn't tell me where he is exactly but from these readings I might have a pretty good idea..." the analyst shook his head in dismay, thinking of the earhole-fuls they'd hear once their leader returned. "First off, the blood doesn't belong to Skipper. It's a completely different strand of DNA entirely, not at all penguin."

"Well if it isn't Skipper's then whose is it?" Marlene asked.

"I'm getting to that…" Kowalski continued. "It's not Skipper's and definitely not that of a penguin. No, this DNA is more…foreign and rare...with a beguiling hint of cherry." the analyst added and shrugged. "It belongs to Hans."


	10. Babbling

**Hoboken Zoo, New Jersey.**

Hans the puffin limped his way through the golden gates of the Hoboken Zoo. It took him a while to get to the Central Park Zoo and then all the way back to New Jersey. It had to be like two hours there and back in the pod he borrowed from Dr. Blowhole. Which reminded him he had to think of a way to break it to the mad dolphin that he may have bumped into a few things here and there, nothing too bad though.

…Okay so he totaled the transportation pod, but he couldn't focus with this massive headache he had! Man did he need an aspirin! Ugh!

Whatever, the mission was with success at least. That's what he was most worried about in the first place. Although it didn't go quite as he planned, it still worked.

The puffin looked back at the heavy sack he was dragging along behind him on the ground. He stopped to look at the lumpy thing for a moment, a small half smile starting to stretch on his colorful beak. He was so happy~!

So he groaned and continued straining to drag the thing back to his puffin habitat.

Up in the lone lemur habitat, Clemson lay bored on his big rock. This rock sucked, he thought. It was much smaller than that idiot King Julien's rock! Whatever, at least this zoo looked better than the Central Park Zoo and it was quieter too. There was no king idiot and no tiny feet loving idiot and no chubby adviser idiot or no black and white idiots to bug him. Well there was one bird like that here, that colorful mouthed freak. But he wasn't a penguin, and he wasn't all that smart either. Anyway, back to his being glad none of those idiots were around to bug him! Yeah, none of those things around here! Although, he did want some loyal subjects to cater to his every whim... Now where could he find some idiot to do everything he told them to?

As Clemson thought about this, he noticed that freak with the rainbow beak lugging some kind of sack. _He could make a good servant, maybe, hey I'll ask already!_

"Hey you there with the sack!" Clemson called down to the puffin.

Hans looked up at the voice, looking up questionably to the lemur's habitat. "Uh, yeah?"

"Hannibal, right? I think that's your name. How's it going?"

The puffin narrowed his eyes. "It is_ Hans_."

"Yeah, yeah, right." Clemson waved off. "Hey, you want to be my loyal and royal servant here?"

"Uuuh, no, not really." Hans answered.

"Alright, I get it, no, I totally do." Clemson shrugged. "Guy's busy with stuff, hey, I get it."

"Yeah…" the puffin nodded and started dragging his bag away from the habitat, wanting to get away from the annoying lemur. "I kinda am, so I am going to go now…"

"Hang on just a minute!" Clemson ordered, jumping down from his habitat to stand in front of the puffin. The brown lemur blocked the path of the puffin. Clemson blinked and pointed down. "I want to know what's in that sack there! I know it's none of my business, you know that too, _crazy_ world we live in right? I mean, _come on_! So what's in it?"

"It is nothing, it is just simple sports things here in this sack! What is so suspicious about a puffin and his sports equipment?" Hans asked.

"Right, sure, but I don't believe you! Come on! You could tell me! I'm your friend in this place!" Clemson jabbed a thumb at himself, showing the puffin he was the friend he was referring to.

"You are?" Hans asked with a raised brow.

"Of course I am, you lovable _freak_, hey! I love your colorful beak, its a nice touch! Did you dye that yourself?" Clemson tapped on the puffin's beak.

Hans scowled and shoved the lemur's paws away from his mouth. The puffin rubbed his beak in annoyance. "I am _not_ a freak, and you are very rude. My beak is all natural, and I don't think I _want_ to be friends with you."

Clemson gave the puffin a dark glare. How dare the stupid bird say he wouldn't want to be friends with him! Everyone wanted to be friends with him! Right? Yeah, they did, of course they did. But the lemur had worked hard to gain the trust off all these stupid Hoboken animals, and he didn't want the puffin to blab to everyone saying he was mean. The colorful freak talked way too much. So the brown and black lemur shrugged. "Alright, the good part is you don't have to be my friend to let me know what's in that bag of yours! What's in it again? It looks heavy, I bet it is, no I know it is, hey, let me help you with that!" the evil lemur reached for the sack.

"No! Get away!" Hans pulled the sack protectively behind his back to keep it away from Clemson. "You cannot have it! This is _my _sack~! Go and get your own you stupid ringy ring-tail!"

"I can't do that since I want to know what's in yours! You should tell me that, whenever you're ready, what about now? Now is good!"

"Fine! Okay!" the puffin growled. "It is Skipper! _Skipper_ is in the sack!"

"He _is_ now?" Clemson blinked. "That's a little weird, but I'm not the one to judge you, I'm not!"

Hans sighed. "I just wanted to talk to him that is all!"

Clemson nodded, looking down at the sack and trying to imagine the leader penguin in there. The lemur blinked and kicked the sack hard.

The puffin's wings pushed him back. "What are you doing? Don't do that! This is what I was afraid of! I would bring him here and everyone would try to get back at him! I don't want anybody to touch him!"

"Wow, that's crazy, not that I'm calling you crazy. Did you_ kill_ that guy?" Clemson exclaimed loudly.

"What?! No! And would you keep it down please? I didn't want anybody to know!"

Clemson turned up his nose, still talking loudly. "Gross, why's it all red and bloody like that?"

"Shush!" Hans covered the lemur's maw with both his wings. "I did not kill Skipper! The blood is mine!"

Clemson nodded and freed his mouth of the puffin's wings. "_Thought he was dead_, honest mistake. But I thought you said before you wanted to talk to him. Back wherever you're from, talking has a backwards meaning, talk means attack? I sure think so. You're from Grrfurjiclestan right? Great place!"

"No, what are you even saying? I am from Denmark! And I did not attack Skipper!" Hans told him. "I tried to talk but he attacked me, even broke a flashlight over my head that is why there is blood. I didn't want to fight, he made me. He threw a hammer at me! I had to make him stop it, he was being _so_ loud~! So I throw us off the island and into the water to quiet him down. He hit his head and I panicked! I headed here so we can talk in private here in my home and none of his friends will chase me away!"

"Alright, makes sense I guess. Since you told me what was in the sack and why you look like you got into the bad end of a fight, I'll let you pass, really, I will._ I said I would_, right?" Clemson said.

"Good." Hans nodded and hefted the sack over his shoulder again.

"But there's still one problem with your plan I noticed, and since I'm a nice guy, _you know that I am_. I'll do the honors of pointing it out to you!" Clemson put an arm around the puffin's neck in what was meant to be a trustworthy gesture.

"Really? What?" Hans asked.

"What's everyone else going to say once they find out you brought the leader of the penguins here? I don't think they'd like that, no, they won't, _I know they won't_."

"I was not going to tell them." The puffin answered.

"Yeah, but someone _else_ might tell them." Clemson admitted truthfully.

Hans didn't understand. He blinked, furrowing his brows. "Who? Who would-" The puffin's eyes narrowed into a death glare when he realized the lemur was referring to himself who was going to tell the whole zoo.

Clemson nodded with an evil smirk. "I see we've come to an understanding, hey, _that's great_! So the question here is; what can you do for me to make sure I don't tell the entire zoo about your little plans here? I'm waiting, and make it something good! Don't hold back on bribery, go big on it, I insist, really let me have it!"

Hans nodded in agreement with his own evil smirk and the last thing Clemson saw before he was knocked unconscious was the puffin's fist coming his way.


	11. An Accident Waiting

**Authors Note: Short but effective. =/**

* * *

Stupid lemur, Hans thought as he dragged the sack with Skipper in it back to his place. Who did that guy think he was? He was a jerk is what he was! He hated lemurs, all they did was make him angry. They were all annoying and too loud! But at least that punch in the face should keep him occupied for a while! The puffin smiled to himself. He was almost to his habitat and then he could finally talk to Skipper! When the penguin woke up that is. When would that be?

The puffin looked down at the unmoving sack and felt his heartbeat quicken. He didn't seriously hurt the penguin did he? He hadn't meant to slam Skipper's head against the wall! It was an accident! Well, he did mean to slam Skipper's head against the wall but he didn't intend to do that from the start!

He just wanted to talk to Skipper but the leader freaked out and started to attack him! It was like the penguin had been fighting for its life! Skipper hit him multiple times, with the flashlight and with the hammer and then flashlight again until glass was everywhere! He was still in pain…

Hans groaned and brought his wing up to touch his head. He was so sure he had glass in it right now! But then he looked down at the sack and frowned for a different reason. Maybe he should not have brought Skipper here. But if he didn't then he would never be able to talk to the penguin!

It was too late now though. Skipper was already in the sack, which he realized hasn't moved since. This worried the puffin. He's never kidnapped anyone before so he knew nothing about what to do in these kinds of situations. Was he supposed to put holes in the bag so Skipper could breathe through? No, that was only with boxes. Should he have used a box instead? He didn't think he owned a box. He was lucky enough to find the burlap sack in the first place, let alone a box! But did he hit the poor penguins head too hard?

These were the thoughts that encircled the puffin's head as he trudged to his place with his Skipper-filled sack. _Oh shut up Hans! Skipper is fine! You did not hit him too hard! What are you talking about? The worse he could be is mad at you! He will just yell, that is all. He might try to fight you with fish but it is nothing you cannot handle! You will just hide the fish, that is it!_

Hans nodded to himself, whistling as he entered his golden gated habitat. He set the keys on the table and went to turn on the lamp he had. He looked around his apartment that was hidden under his habitat. His place didn't look too bad. It was modeled to resemble his home country respectively. Blowhole had the lobsters help build it for him. It was payment for sticking around to carry out more schemes with him against the penguins.

The puffin didn't argue at the deal he was given. If anything, he only accepted so he could see Skipper more often and for the Wi-Fi. He could never forget about the Wi-Fi. His iPad easily connected to the mammal fish's WLAN. He used the internet to order everything he needed and to keep contact with his sources back in Denmark. He still wasn't allowed back, but he did get inside information every now and again on word from the embassy concerning him or Skipper's files.

They both were still banned and wanted dead or alive. Alright, so maybe Skipper was more wanted than he was but that was only because he fled before things got any farther all those years ago. He wasn't a coward! It's just that he didn't like those security guys. That chief frightened him in terrifying ways! So he ditched Skipper after they were caught. It wasn't wrong for him to do! He simply decided to abort while Skipper decided on following through. They obviously had two separate battle strategies in mind at the time...

They both jumped blindly into danger, that much was true for both of them. The only difference is that when the situation started to go south, Skipper kept fighting through until the end. And for Hans, when he saw things start to go south, he ran away from it. That was part of the reason why their relationship has been kind of _rocky _ever since…

"_Don't 'ja'! I'm not your fun pal, you demented Dane!"_

Of course, Skipper was just kidding when he said that the last time he was here surely. The penguin didn't really _mean it_. Of course they were still pals!

Hans dragged the sack up to the side of his green couch. He untied the opening and picked the unconscious penguin leader up bridal style, setting Skipper on the couch to lie down until it was time for him to wake up.

The puffin stared at the short penguin for a little while before head off to the bathroom to tend to his aching head. He looked in the mirror, parting his feathers so he could see where the glass was. Hans used some tweezers he kept on the sink to pick out the shards from his head and using towels to clean the blood away. It didn't bleed as much as it had been before which was a relief to him. He _hated_ the sight of blood! He had to keep _himself _from fainting after dragging both himself and Skipper out of the penguin pool. He admits that he's slightly hematophobic when it came to blood, and that was when it was someone else's blood so you could only imagine how he felt when he saw that it was HIS blood!

In a way though, Hans was happy he was the one who got the nastier knock on the head and not Skipper. If it was Skipper who had gotten hurt during his abduction of the penguin, it would make this situation a lot harder to explain when the penguin woke up.

"Uhn…"

Hans blinked when he heard the mumbling coming from the other room. Was Skipper starting to wake up already? That sure was fast! Too fast! The puffin started to panic. He didn't even hide the _fish_ yet!

"Wh-wha…uhn…" came Skipper's mumble, getting even more coherent per second.

The puffin was in alarm as he raced into his living room, standing in front of the couch. He watched the penguin start to stir, failing to open its eyes. Hans looked around for any solution to slowing down the waking process. He found a throw pillow and blinking at it, he picked it up. The puffin looked back at the defenseless leader and then back at the pillow, putting two and two together he hovered the pillow over the penguin's face.

In that moment Skipper's eyes shot open.


	12. Heart

Hans looked back at the defenseless leader and then back at the pillow, putting two and two together he hovered the pillow over the penguin's face.

In that moment Skipper's eyes shot open. The leader blinked up in confusion, glancing between the puffin over him and the pillow. He didn't figure out what the Dane was about to do, thankfully for the puffin, but he just looked confused and downright bewildered. "Hans?"

The puffin in question grinned sheepishly, his wings frozen on the spot with the pillow in them. "Oh, hi Skipper. You seem well. How have you been, my frienemy?"

"I'm fine... just a little confused..." Skipper looked around the unfamiliar apartment. "Where am I? What happened?"

"Uuuh _well_~" Hans started. He remembered the pillow in his wings and quickly tossed it away from them. "You hit your head pretty hard and then passed out, but you are alright now. Aren't you?"

"Well… my head does hurt a bit…" Skipper mumbled, rubbing the back of his head. "But you didn't answer my question. What happened?"

The puffin laughed. "You may have hit your head harder than I have thought. I already told you what happened. So you lie back down now~" Hans pushed the penguin back down onto the couch cushions. "And I will get you an ice pack for that bump of yours."

The penguin nodded and watched the Dane walk off into the kitchen. Skipper waited until he was gone to sit up again. The leader groaned immediately after he did, feeling a wave of dizziness crash through him. He was almost sure the room was spinning. Ugh, what happened to him? Where was he? Why was he with Hans in some house he's never seen before and where was his team? Were they hurt too? He needed answer and he wasn't going to get them laying down. So he made himself stand. _Worst _mistake of his life. The penguin fell over.

"Skipper!" Hans exclaimed and rushed over to catch the penguin before he fell on the coffee table. "You do not follow simple directions, I told you to lie down! You nearly keeled yourself over! What do you have to say now?"

Skipper groaned out his answer. "I don't take orders from you…"

"Of course not, but lie down still. You hit your head _very_ hard~" the puffin tried to lead the penguin back to his couch.

The penguin didn't argue, instead just letting the Dane set him down on the cushions, placing a pillow under his head. "What happened?" Skipper asked again as an ice pack was held to his head, he shivered at the sudden chill of it.

"We fight but you fell in the water. I pulled you out before you drowned down there." Hans told half of the truth to the leader. Not only for his own safety but this meeting would never work if the penguin had a reason to be angry at him. The puffin wanted to keep things calm and then ease into his proposition. Maybe then Skipper would accept it.

"Where's my men?"

"They are fine, they weren't there when it happened."

Skipper shook his head. "You saved me from drowning, why?" "

"Oh Skipper, I couldn't let my favorite frienemy die."

"You have other frienemies than me?" Skipper asked and the puffin could detect a hint of jealousy in the penguin's voice. How it delighted him so!

"Actually," The puffin leaned in closer to the leader's face. "You are my _one and only_~" Hans said in a low tone, making a bright blush form on the penguin's face.

"Oh." Skipper looked away, his cheeks heating up. "Well thanks, you know, for saving me anyway."

"It was my pleasure~" Hans smirked. "Now could I get you anything? Anything at all…~" The puffin eyed the penguin's beak with lust filled eyes. He started closing in, using his wing to lift the leader's chin up so they looked each other in the eyes.

"H-Hans…" Skipper stuttered but the deal was done and their beaks locked together in a sweet kiss.

The puffin broke the kiss after a while, breaking off to kiss down the penguin's cheek.

"Hans, stop…" The leader told him, gasping as he felt the beak wander over his neck. "_Stop_, Hans." Skipper ordered, more firmly.

"I don't want to~" Hans mumbled against his feathers, sending a shiver down the penguin's spine as he went back up to connect their beaks in another heated kiss.

Skipper didn't know what to think as the Dane started lowering them both down against the couch, the puffin holding one of his flippers in his own, pinning it down on the sofa. Things were moving so quickly and the leader's heart threatened to beat out of his chest.

The puffin was on top of him now, wrapping his wings around the penguin's body, urging them to get closer. For nothing more than support the leader wrapped his flippers around the Dane's neck. Other than that, the penguin was frozen still. He hadn't moved since the puffin started, didn't even kiss back he was in that much of a shock. But the problem was, Skipper didn't think he _wanted_ to respond to the affection the puffin was showing him…

The penguin was about to push the puffin away in protest when a wetness dripping on his flippers made him ask a question between the last kiss given. "What's this?"

Hans gave a low chuckle, leaning back down to place kisses down the penguin's shoulder. "Oh Skipper, it is whatever it is you want it to~"

"No, I mean what's this?" Skipper pulled back, outstretching his damp flippers that were painted in small amounts of red. "Is this blood? You said _I _hit my head yet_ you're_ the one who's bleeding on _me_."

Hans pulled back completely, holding the back of his head to try to stop the bleeding. "Oh gosh, sorry! I thought I had taken care of that! I am so sorry!"

Skipper nodded. "It's alright, I-"

"No it is not because I have ruined everything now!" the puffin cried. "I had one chance to do this and I have failed horribly!"

"What are you talking about?"

Hans ignored the question and went on in dismay. "You didn't even respond when I kissed you! You didn't like it!"

The leader sighed. "Hans, I _did _like it." Skipper admitted.

"You did?" the puffin asked, surprised.

"_Yes_."

"Then why didn't you…kiss me back? What was wrong?"

Skipper shook his head. "We can't-" the leader started but cut himself off. "I think it's best if we just forget this whole thing ever happened."

Hans felt as if his heart had been ripped out of his chest, stepped on and crushed into tiny pieces. His chest hurt horribly now. "But _why_, Skipper?"

"It's not you, it's me." Skipper told him and then took it back. "Okay, I lied, it's both of us. We wouldn't really…_work out_."

"We could!" Hans argued.

"No, we couldn't." the leader had to disagree.

"Well we have never tried, how do we know?"

"I know."

"No you don't!" the puffin raised his voice.

"Come on, Hans. Don't get upset about this. It's just like back in Denmark. We made a horrible team. I know from that experience that we could never work out as a couple. We wouldn't even work out as _friends_."

Tears stung Hans' eyes as he argued with his crush. "That was a long time ago! Things have changed since then!"

"We're enemies and we were always meant to stay enemies. The zoo overlords have made that much clear."

"Well they don't know what they're talking about!" the puffin shouted.

"Hans please, you're arguing with overlords here. You can't win."

"Things _have_ changed, Skipper!"

Skipper scoffed. "No they haven't. You're still the same old Dane I met back in Copenhagen. You bail out of things too easily and you left me to die back in that embassy. You'd probably do it again if you could."

"No I would not! I saved you from drowning, didn't I? That is proof that I care about you!"

"Yeah right, for all I know you're the one who push me in the water in the first place." Skipper rolled his eyes, missing the guilty look the puffin gave afterward. "And besides; you could never change, Hans. You're way too stubborn for that." The penguin crossed his flippers as if he's already made up his mind and wouldn't change it. This irritated the puffin's nerves immensely and the Dane couldn't hold in his anger any longer.

"OH, I NEVER SHOULD HAVE KIDNAPPED YOU!" Hans yelled furiously, clapping his wings over his beak when he realized what he just blurted out. "Uuuh…you…did not hear that…"

"What? You _kidnapped_ me?!" Skipper shouted in disbelief.

The puffin shrunk back at the raising of the commander's voice. He forgot how powerful the penguin's anger could be. Definitely something to remember for next time. "Wait, Skipper! I can explain this! There_ is_ more to it!"

"_More?_" the leader questioned furiously.

"O-or it could be _less_!" Hans corrected. "I said it was whatever you want, remember I said that~?" the Dane stammered, hoping the penguin will forget how mad he was and go back to thinking about the pleasures they would have had on the couch.

"I _want_ to go home!" Skipper shouted. "Where are my men? What have you done with them, you demented bird!"

"I told you already, they are fine! They weren't there when we-"

"Why should I believe you? For all I know, this is just some plot organized and funded by Dr. Blowhole!"

"No, Skipper! Blowhole does not even know you're here!" Hans regretted that statement too, but again, too late.

"Blowhole is _here_!?"

"No! Well- technically, but not really! He is down in his lair." Yet another mistake he didn't catch in time.

"Is this a trap? Is that what all of this was?" Skipper demanded, pushing the puffin.

"No, it was not!" Hans cried. "I _do_ love you, Skipper!"

The fact that the penguin saw those three powerful words as a lie only fueled his rage. How could he have been so stupid? Of course this was just some ploy to mess with his emotions. "Where are we, Hans?" Skipper pressed.

"I…I don't want to tell you that…" Hans admitted, knowing good and well what would happen if he told the penguin where they currently were.

"YOU TELL ME RIGHT NOW OR SO HELP ME-"

"Stop! Okay! We…We are in my habitat in New Jersey…" Hans stammered.

"You brought me to _HOBOKEN?! _Oh, no, no, no, no, no, _ NO._" Skipper shook his head in disbelief, starting to pace around the puffin's apartment in something close to panic. "I- I _can't_ be in Hoboken!"

"Skipper…" Hans tried, but the penguin kept crazily muttering to himself while pacing.

"…_Not _Hoboken, _ANYTHING_ but Hoboken…"

Hans sighed, mildly insulted. "It is not _that bad_ here, you know…"

"ARE YOU INSANE?! THIS IS HOBOKEN! HOW COULD YOU BRING ME HERE TO HOBOKEN!?"

"_Calm down_, Skipper! You are scaring me!" Hans said and was disgusted as the penguin successfully regurgitated a rather large tooth. "I didn't know penguins had teeth…"

"_HOBOKEN_, HANS! _**HOBOKEN**_!"


	13. Alert

**Authors Note: I apologize for the lack of material. And the shortness of the following chapters. This story is probably about half over. There's not much left to go now.**

**~Natty**

* * *

**Central Park Zoo.**

"Hans?" Private questioned. "But how does that make sense? If the DNA belonged to Hans then where's Skippah?"

"I think I have a pretty good idea…" The analyst shook his head in dismay, thinking of the earhole-fuls they'd hear once their leader returned. "I also advise that we break out our earhole protection."

"You mean our earmuffs? Why's that, K'walski?"

"I have a feeling things are going to get quite loud once Skipper's returns."

"How do you know Skippah's coming back on his own?" Private asked and jumped as a rather loud alarm started to sound. "Oh dear, that's rather loud isn't it?"

"Gah!" Marlene exclaimed, jumping up and covering her earholes. "What _is_ that?"

"_**HOBOKEN, I AM IN HOBOKEN. SERIOUSLY, IT'S HOBOKEN. IN NEW JERSEY. SAVE ME FROM HOBOKEN. HOBOKEN, HOBOKEN, HOBOKEN! REALLY, I AM NOT KIDDING AROUND IT IS SERIOUSLY HOBOKEN! YOU GUYS, SERIOUSLY. HOBOKEN, HOBOKEN…" **_the computerized voice alarm announced loudly throughout the entire penguin HQ.

Even though Kowalski had his flippers covering his ear drums he could still hear and give an answer to the otter, right after picking up a remote from next to the radio. The analyst pressed a button and the alarm shut off with a beep similar to the way a car alarm would. "That would be the Hoboken emergency hollow tooth alarm created by Skipper."

Maurice blinked in disgust with his paws clutching his ears. "I didn't know you penguins _had _any teeth."

"I want to see penguin teethies!" Mort cried over the alarm, running up to Rico and jumping up to forcibly open his beak to peer inside.

"Ey! Geh ou' uh dere!" Rico complained and grabbed the small lemur by the bushy tail, flinging Mort on the ground. "Ah own nee' no tee'."

Kowalski nodded. "Rico is correct and so are you, Maurice. Because we swallow our fish whole and our beaks also act as prodding mechanisms, we were not given teeth in the phase of evolution."

"Then what's up with the tooth alarm?" Maurice asked. "Thing gave me a headache…"

"The Hoboken emergency hollow tooth alarm was made my Skipper. Its purpose is to serve as a distress signal or SOS call. SOS, as in…SWEET SCIENCE SAVE OUR SKINS FROM THE HORROR THAT IS THE HOBOKEN ZOO IN THE EVEN _MORE _HORRIFYING HORRORS OF NEW JERSEY!" the analyst cried, and then took a calming breath to get back his normal volume, adding in. "…Located off Exit 14 C and subway convenient by fare of a _single token_." Kowalski said in disgust, shaking his head. "There is no greater trap than one of reasonable price."

"Hoboken?" Private gasped. "Oh no! Skippah's there all by himself with all those unpleasant villains! Why, I bet they're doing all sorts of mean things to him! They could be torturing him or worse!" the private bowed his head as he felt the analyst place a supportive flipper on his shoulder. "Poor Skippah…he didn't even see it all coming…"

_~PoM~_

**Hoboken Zoo.**

Okay that was something he didn't see coming at all. How could he have anticipated that? Really, he couldn't, he said he couldn't, right? That was just _uncalled _for!

"I hate that puffin!" Clemson complained, rubbing his aching face. How dare that stupid colorful faced freak knock him unconscious! That was crazy that that happened. Don't you think so? He did, he really thought that. But enough for now, because now he had to retaliate in some heinous way. Now was the time for revenge. On that puffin, and then that penguin too. He could get both of them at the same time actually, yeah, he could do that, he could.

"What's _this_?" the evil lemur grinned wickedly, talking to himself. "A deviously handsome plan I've suddenly thought up while standing here? I think so! Hey, I'm so smart it makes me feel that I'm even more handsome and devious than I previously thought! Way more than that idiot King Booty-for-Brains! Why'd I bring him up again? I don't know, I'm just gonna start maniacally laughing now." Clemson started with his evil laughter as thunder and lightning randomly went off in the background.

_~PoM~_

Hans blinked as the sky lit up with lightning and thunder. That was weird. The sky was clear just a moment ago.

The puffin bit his bottom beak as he readied the transportation pod he borrowed from Dr. Blowhole. It was still damaged beyond repair but he managed to hot wire it enough for it to be able to make one more round trip. After that it was kaput, kablamo, busted, and never to fly again. And the dolphin probably wouldn't let him use anything else for a LONG time.

This meant he'd literally be grounded, in the transportation way that is. He wouldn't be going anywhere with any help any time soon, and he didn't have any fare to take a taxi or the subway. The mad dolphin would surely cut off his funds after this and he wouldn't be leaving Hoboken for sure. He also wouldn't be able to see a certain lovable arctic bird. He frowned, really not wanting to start up the pod to leave.

"Skipper…" the Dane started, looking over his shoulder to spot the penguin behind him with its arms crossed. He had been fixing the pod to take Skipper back to the Central Park Zoo. The penguin said he wanted to be taken home and Hans couldn't really say no with a flipper squeezing around his throat. "The weather is going bad. I don't think it's wise leaving Hoboken tonight."

"I'll tell you what isn't wise! You, bringing me here in the first place! Now fix the ride and let's get a move on!" the short penguin ordered, opening up the pod and hopping in, waiting for the puffin to take him back already.

Hans sighed and reluctantly got in the pod, readying himself at the driving mechanisms, gripping the steering handles in death locked wings. "Where to?"

"To the Central Park Zoo! Where do you _think_?" Skipper replied coldly.

The puffin stood frozen, looking away from the giant window shield to look at the penguin seated on the ground of the pod. Their meeting couldn't end like this. _Something_ had to at least go right. "Skipper-"

Skipper knew what was going to come next so he cut the Dane off right then and there. "Would you just drive already!?" The penguin leader snapped.

Hans closed his beak and a few seconds later their pod was airborne. He'd taken the one with new flight-capable modifications, another reason for the fish mammal to kill him later on. As their vehicle went further on, so did the silence and the puffin took glances back at the penguin who had been staring at him from behind. They kept missing each other's line of sight when Skipper kept looking the other way.

Much to the penguin's relief the Dane stopped trying to talk to him. Good, Skipper thought and the set of golden eyes turned back to see him once more. He looked away.


	14. Traveling

Hans drove for forty-five minutes straight in pure silence. He was bored way too much by now. He'd stopped looking back at Skipper. The penguin only pretended to look out the vehicle window whenever he turned back to look. But he could feel Skipper's gaze on the back of his head, he just couldn't understand why. The penguin was angry at him was he not? Maybe that was it!

The puffin gained a wide grin as he thought further into it. Skipper was angry sure, but not at him for kidnapping him. No, Skipper was only angry because he chose to make his confession in Hoboken, a place the penguin hated. That was logical, wasn't it? It was to him. Hans was positive that the only reason his proposition for them to be something more was denied was because they weren't in the right place. He could still fix this and the penguin would actually see how fond he actually was of him. It was great! He still had a second chance with Skipper!

_Now only what place he likes~? Hm…_ Skipper most definitely hated Denmark and New Jersey so Copenhagen and Hoboken were both out. The puffin remembered that the penguin liked the beach. Hans even recalled Skipper telling him about a fling that was once had by the seashore between the penguin and another female penguin. The puffin remembered how happy the penguin leader was that he got the girl's number, even going on and on about how perfect the day was. So naturally Hans stole the paper with the female penguin's number on it and tore it to pieces before setting said pieces on fire. What? It was nothing personal~

Skipper was _HIS_ and _NO ONE_ else's! He got angry at the very thought of the penguin with somebody else. There was no problem with that. Skipper would always be his in the Dane's mind. His, his and no one else's. Ever. Nope, no problem with that. How he adored the cute little- hey, did he hear snoring? Hans snapped out of his thoughts, his attention immediately taken by how low to the ground he was flying this pod. Whoopsies. The puffin pulled up last minute before hitting a moving car.

"_**MY CAR!"**_ cried some man in distress.

So he did hit the car then. Apologies to that man with the huge gaping dent in his hood.

"That was close…" Hans sighed in relief, glad he didn't just kill both him and Skipper in some freak accident that totally wasn't his fault because he hadn't been paying attention. But they were fine. He was still driving fine and well while the penguin was snoring away- wait, snoring away? What in the name of the Danish queen?

The puffin turned with an arched eye brow. When he looked down at the floor of the pod his gold eyes widened. Skipper had fallen asleep and was now curled up by the curved wall of the sphere vehicle. He was so…_cute!_

"Oh my gosh, that's adorable!" The Dane exclaimed and saw the sleeping penguin twitch at his outburst. Hans quieted himself quickly with a wing over his beak. With some quick thinking on how he didn't want to cause an actual crash by him not paying attention to the road and half because he was just flipped off, he set the pod to floating mode so it stayed still in mid-air above the city.

How a giant red floating mechanical sphere didn't cause attention to those down below was a mystery to him. Oh wait. He looked down below and the same old woman from before flipped him off again, screaming at him that he was a 'bad birdy'. The puffin rolled his eyes and activated the soundproof feature. Good, now all he could hear was Skipper's soft and even breathing. It was calming and…the most beautiful sound he's ever heard. He loved what he was hearing from the sweet little penguin's respiratory system! He sighed when he found out that just hearing wasn't going to be enough for him to continue on driving. He needed something for himself out of this slight delay and besides, he was sure Skipper wouldn't even notice that he took a little pit stop…

Hans decided and took a step towards the sleeping leader as quietly as he could. Then he remembered that the pod was transparent and those down below could probably see whatever it is they were doing. So he took a moment to activate the cover feature and a nontransparent layer of glass soon covered the outer layer, sealing them in to their own little bubble of privacy. The puffin wasted no time in walking up close to the penguin, trying desperately not to wake the other by sliding down to sit by his side.

He watched Skipper's chest rise and fall in slumber, studying how the feathers elevated and descended with each breath. He reached a hesitant and shaky wing over to stroke the feathers on the penguin's outer thigh. The Dane flinched back when Skipper's leg suddenly kicked at him, the dead to the world penguin leader offering an annoyed groan of protest at the intrusion. Hans shook his head in amusement with a half smirk before retracting his wing to place it on Skipper's side.

"I love you." The puffin said, testing out the words on his tongue and how they sounded. He half frowned. He liked that he said it but it did need some work if he was ever going to say it perfectly. So he tried again. "I love you Skipper…" _Oh, that was better. Now I must really sell it! _"I love you _so_ much, Skipper~" Hans was so over thrilled that he slid his wing underneath the oblivious penguin, lifting it up to lie its head up against his chest, holding the penguin in a loving embrace. He was so busy with his nuzzling of his crush that he didn't notice the brake lever slipping back into driving mode. The puffin's beak was seconds away from the other's when the pod lurched and they were both thrown forward. It was then that Hans realized their pod was crashing and heard Skipper's muffled scream against his chest.


	15. Commitment

Sometime during the ride back to New York, he must have fallen asleep. The last thing he remembered was feeling sleepy on the floor of the transportation pod. Now he was jerked awake and felt like he was falling and behind grabbed on from behind. There was literally a body behind him and two wings clasped around his torso, also the tip of a colorful beak visible over his shoulder.

"Hans!" Skipper shouted behind him at the shaking Dane. The world was spinning around them; well actually it was just the pod they were in spinning out of control. "What in the name of progressive car insurance is going on! What the heck is wrong with your ride and why are you _holding on_ to me?!"

"It is a malfunction! The rain didn't do the damaged engine much good and we are going to CRASH! And uuuh, as for the holding on to you part…I am frightened!"

Skipper tried to pry the puffin from around him. "Get off of me and take control of this pod!"

"I cannot control it!"

"Can't control which one? I said like two things in that last sentence."

"Both!" Hans nodded and tightened his grip around the penguin leader. "Did anyone ever tell you that you have soft feathers~?"

"HANS! Get control of this thing NOW!"

"Alright already!" The puffin whined and reluctantly let go of the penguin. He got up and grabbed hold of the steering handle, straining to pull it up. Hans was able to pull up last moment before they crashed into a building. Instead of crashing into said building their pod scraped against the roof of it, bouncing and skidding across another building roof. This continued, the pod scraping against multiple roofs with sparks flying from the metal.

"Good, we didn't crash now maybe you could slow down a little."

"I cannot, Skipper! The brakes, they are gone!"

"No brakes?! What were you thinking when you bought this thing!?"

"It is not mine! I borrow it from Dr. Mammal fish!"

"Well didn't he tell you what to do in case of a malfunction?"

"Uh, he may have," Hans admitted, swerving to avoid hitting a vent opening but smashing into the garden on another building roof. "But I don't think it would help us much now is all~"

"If he said to do it, odds are it'll probably help us!" Skipper said as if it were obvious, and it was. If the dolphin offered advice on what to do during a crash, of course it could help them! "So do whatever it is he told you to do!"

"I cannot!" The puffin huffed.

"Why not?!"

"Because you aren't on the ground, you are in the pod with me!"

Skipper blinked, not understanding at first but his eyes narrowed as he caught on. "What exactly did Blowhole say to do if you were crashing in this thing?"

"You really want to know? Okay fine, he told me to crash it into you to break my fall." The puffin said.

The penguin glowered down at the ground, thinking over his complete hatred for his mad dolphin enemy. He didn't respond to the answer given. He wasn't angry about it. It just mildly annoyed him.

Hans found the silence given to be awkward and discomforting. "So you can see how that doesn't quite help~"

Skipper muttered. "Curse you Blo- WOAH!" The leader cried as he was thrown to the side of the pod hard when the pod lurched to the side to avoid hitting a post.

"AH!" The puffin exclaimed, turning again to avoid some other obstacle. Looking at the damage their round vehicle had taken, being dented and covered in dust and mud, it didn't look like they'd last much longer. "THIS IS SO FRIGHTENING! I don't want to watch anymore!"

"Hans, open your eyes!"

"I don't want to~!"

"LOOK AT THE ROAD!" The penguin shouted.

"We are not on any road! And we are going to die anyway!"

Skipper shook his head. "I knew puffins couldn't drive! Get over here!"

Hans shook his head, eyes clenched shut. His eyes shot open when he felt a flipper smack him hard in the face, sending him staggering back into the rounded wall. He looked up to see the penguin pulling hard on the steering handles, attempting to steer the thing. "You smack too hard! Why do you do that!"

"Not…now…!" Skipper yanked on the handles with a strained groan. It was stuck and barely budged when he forced it. Using all his strength he was able to loosen it up a bit to punch it to the left, narrowly avoiding a lamp post on a city corner. The pod, after free-falling off a building earlier was now skidding fast across the city streets, sparks flying and the smell of burning plastic being left in its path. Smoke exhausted from the engine from a visible panel and a rock flew up into the air. The rock broke through the windshield, hitting the puffin in the face with a pained whimper.

"Owwwwwwwwww~!" The puffin whined loudly, rubbing his chipped beak. "I think I chipped my beak! Owwww! Skipp_errrrr_!" Hans whined the penguin's name.

"Brace for impact!" Skipper shouted over his shoulder. He was able to get the pod back up in the air again, unable to harm any civilians. They were right above the Central Park Zoo and were coming down fast. He just hoped they didn't hurt anyone on the way down. The penguin readied himself for the imminent crash approaching them but he didn't hear a sound from the Dane. "Hans! Did you hear me? I said brace for impact!"

"Oh, I heard you loud and clear my pretty palsy~!"

"What are you-! I said brace for impact, not _EM_brace _me_!"

"Don't worry, you'll die in loving wings, Skipper!"

"GET OFF OF ME!"

_~PoM~_

**Penguin HQ. **

"So now that we know where Skipper is and all that…why don't we, I don't know, go and actually _find_ him? And bring him back here?" Marlene asked. "That sounds like a plan, right?"

"I'm afraid not, Marlene." Kowalski answered. "There is no need to retrieve Skipper now that we've discovered his location."

"What? Why not?" The otter exclaimed, thoroughly confused and shocked. How come the guys didn't want to go ensue Skipper's safety by rescuing him? That didn't make any sense to her at all why they wouldn't.

Kowalski shrugged. "There just isn't. Skipper's in Hoboken, case closed. Now all we have to do is wait for his safe return."

"And just what if Skipper's safe return doesn't turn out to be all that safe?" Maurice crossed his arms.

The analyst shook his head. "Oh you poor naïve mammal, Hoboken is completely harmless."

Marlene blinked. "But happened to Private's bit about all those villains, how they could be torturing Skipper and how he never saw it coming and all that! How's all that supposed to be '_harmless_'?" The otter's fingers made quotations.

"Private _has_ always been one to overreact…" Kowalski explained.

"Are not!" Private glared, stamping his foot and turning around to show his back to the analyst.

"And be a bit on the childish side…But no, Skipper can take down every one of those villains living in Hoboken with both his flippers tied in a pretty little bow behind his back! And _that_ was just because they were _singing_! Could you imagine what Skipper would do to them if they did something worse? I know for a fact that I wouldn't want to." The analyst said to the group.

"Shouldn't we save the villains from him then?" Maurice proposed. "There's nothin more terrifying that I've ever seen than an angry Skipper."

"Precisely, and I'm not naturally the one to seek revenge but those villains have just brought upon their own destruction by messing with Skipper in the first place. If they had the nerve to kidnap him then they better have the nerve to bring him back. Skipper always comes back one way or another." Kowalski said.

"Better hope he don't come back in a body bag, all I'm sayin'…" Maurice muttered under his breath, earning a glare from the analyst.

"What was that, Maurice?" Private asked, the small penguin not having heard what the aye-aye said. "Your mutter was a tad low and I didn't quite catch it."

Kowalski threw on a forced reassuring smile. "He was muttering about how Skipper will be back very soon. In fact, Skipper could walk in through that door unharmed any second now!"

The lab door was miraculously flung open a second later, a penguin-like shadow figure looming in the doorway.

"Skippah! It's you! I knew you'd come back, Skippah!" Private exclaimed, running up to greet his leader but the small penguin stopped in his tracks. "You're not Skippah…"


	16. Appearances

**Authors Note: If you're following this story, leave a review so I know this isn't being written for naught. Ya know, for nada. hehe. **

**~Natty**

* * *

~PoM~

"You're not Skippah…" Private backed away from the door, looking over at the temporary leader for some guidance. "K'walski…"

"Ah hanul it." Rico reassured everyone and stepped forward. "Nuh-won home!"

Maurice shook his head. "I don't really think that's gonna work…"

Marlene jumped back in fright, taking slow steps backwards. She glanced hopefully over at the analyst. "Uh Kowalski? Now might be a good time to enact some of that revenge you don't normally give out…"

"Don't be frightened, Marlene." The analyst got into a fighting stance in front of her. "Whoever it is, we can take them."

"Without Skipper?" The otter snorted, unconvinced.

Kowalski scowled. "We may not be as good without him but we _aren't_ completely defenseless for KNICKER'S SAKE!"

"Um, K'walski?" Private called. "He's staring at me." The small penguin whimpered in fear as the stranger seemed to have their attention solely on him.

The analyst went on with his rant, oblivious. "I mean, Skipper isn't our WHOLE TEAM! He's our leader! So while we're mathematically only supposed to be ¼ worse off without him, he still leads us so OF COURSE we're less good without him! But we still have 3 out of 4 which again mathematically speaking is STILL not that bad! We still have a weapons expert, an intellectually handsome lieutenant/options guy, and more or less…Private, I suppose…"

"What?" Private turned his attention to the analyst. "How come I'm so uncertain in your rant?"

"You're not uncertain, Private, you're just…in line of a pyramid, that's all." Kowalski explained the best he could.

The private gasped and pointed an accusing flipper. "You're saying I'm at the bottom!"

The analyst nodded. "Well, naturally, yes."

"And you're saying Rico is lower than you!" Private added to his accusations.

"Ey wha! Gbungrazaba!" complained the weapons specialist.

"I know!" Private scoffed. "The nerve of him, right?"

Kowalski sighed. "You've got it all _completely_ out of context! Look, all I was saying was that we are all part of a unit. If that unit is missing major pieces then that unit cannot function as properly as it would if it had all the parts needed for full operation. That is ALL I said!"

"An' moe!" Rico growled.

"No! Nothing more!" Kowalski argued. "I was not trying to insult anyone!"

"Humph!" the weapons expert crossed his arms.

The analyst threw up his flippers in exasperation. "I don't know how I WORK with you people!"

Marlene stared at the penguins. "_Wow_, you guys need Skipper back."

Kowalski sobbed into his flippers. "I miss him so much!"

"Oh, I cannot be standing it anymore! I am missing de bossy penguin too!" came a crying shout from the doorway.

"Julien?" Private questioned, watching as the king lemur stepped out of the shadows of the lab door.

"Skipper?" Julien looked overjoyed and threw himself at the private, enveloping the small confused penguin in a hug. "How I have been missing you my bestest feather fish!"

Private squirmed out of the king's arms. "I'm not Skippah!"

Julien blinked. "You are not?"

"No, I'm Private."

"Who?" King Julien stared without a clue but then annoyed recognition lit up on his face. "Nice-y guy penguin, is dat you?"

Private nodded. "Well, yes, technically."

"How could you pretend to be Skipper at a time like this!? Do you not know how much I am to be missing him! How could you pull such a horrible prank!" Julien cried.

"What are you doing here, Julien?" Kowalski glared.

"Smarty penguin!" King Julien exclaimed and ran up to hug the analyst way too hard. "I am so glad you are being here! I was looking for you all ova de place! Why did you not tell me you would be being here?"

The analyst raised an eyebrow. "At my home?"

"You coulda called or something! Do you know how many places I had to go to find out dat you were down here?"

Maurice rolled his eyes. "Meaning you came straight here from our habitat, right?"

"How did you know dat? Have you been spying upon me?"

"No, Julien." Kowalski answered, pushing the lemur away from him much to the other's dismay. "No one has been spying on you. You're just easily analyzed by everyone that has known you for more than a few moments. But this I have to admit is completely unexpected of you, barging in here showing us so much affection."

"What? Ya neva seen a king hugging upon a feather fish before? "

"Well, according to you we are stinky, flightless, stupid, and at times silly." The analyst listed names the penguin group had recently been called by the ring-tailed king.

"But you are all being so cute!" Julien clasped his hands in endearment for the penguins. "And also being de cuddly! …Freako! It is you!" the lemur latched himself on the weapons specialist.

"Man, his name is _Rico_!" Maurice said. "And I don't think you should be huggin him like that."

Rico snorted like a bull and steam came out his nose holes on his beak. This caused the lemur king to sheepishly instate a reasonable and change distance away from the thick penguin.

"Right, forgot about dat." Julien admitted awkwardly. "But anyway, have you found de bossy penguin yet? I am needing to be speaking to him now please."

"Since when do you say please?" Maurice asked, astonished.

"What? I always say my pleasies and my thank-y you's! Can you not see dat I am a tender and loving thing?"

"I missed you so much, King Julien!" Mort came running up to hug the king's leg when he was kicked across the lab by the same foot he only wanted to love.

Private shook his head. "Well that wasn't very tender _or_ loving, at all really."

"No it absolutely was not." Kowalski glared at the lemur. "That was the antonym's of tender and loving!"

"Julien! What the heck!" Marlene ran over to tend to the fallen Mort, helping the little mouse lemur stand up again. "Mort, you okay?"

"Wh-where is he? N-need…King Julien…Ouchies!" Mort stumbled on his feet blindly searching for the lemur king only to fall flat on his face from how dazed he was from hitting the wall. Normally when the king kicked him away, they were outside and he flew far until he landed on something not that painful. Here in the HQ there wasn't that far to go and Mort was stopped by the concrete walls.

"Oo bad!" Rico scolded the lemur king, hitting him on the crown with a rolled up newspaper. "Oo do dah owzide!"

Kowalski shook his head. "It isn't the matter that he should do that outside, it's that he shouldn't do that _at all_. Mort obviously can't defend himself. His halo of ignorance won't allow him too."

"Halo of what?" Marlene questioned.

"You weren't there for that episode." the analyst waved her off.

"Ha! Suckuh!" Rico teased that he was in the episode and she wasn't. The weapon's expert saw the looks he got from the rest of the animals so he frowned and turned his attention back to hitting Julien with the newspaper. "Oo bad!"

"Ow! …Huh, I didn't know paper could hurt dat much…ow! …Dis experience is new to me…ow! …Stop, you are denting de royal crown!…Ow! …Maurice, be saving me! …OW!"

Maurice sighed and snatched the rolled up paper from the thick penguin.

"Ey!" Rico cried when his weapon was snatched away from him.

"Come on guys, stop hating on Julien. I think he's learnt his lesson already." Maurice reasoned.

"Hm..." Rico thought, staring the king up and down. Finally the thick penguin made his decision with a shake of the head. "Nope." decided Rico and picked up the private by the back feathers. "Oo bad!" and used Private to hit the lemur king to the ground.

Private groaned as he sat up, rubbing his head. "Oh…dear…"

"How dare you be throwing stinky stupid silly penguins at me!" Julien yelled as he too sat up. He quickly noticed that his crown was off his head. "*Gasp* De royal crown is MISSING from my kingly head!"

"Your majesty, it's right there next to you." Maurice pointed.

Julien looked down to his left to see his crown on the ground beside him. "Oh, so it is. I am thanking you, Maurice." the lemur happily put the royal hat back on his head. "And none of you stupidies answered my question about de Skipper bossy penguin! Have you founded upon him yet! I demand to know!"

"Sort of." Maurice shrugged, helping the king to his feet.

"What kind of answer to my quest-y-tion is dat? None of you will ever be de president wit such stupidy smartiness like dat! Especially not dat nice-y penguin, dats for sure!"

Private sighed as his dreams of becoming the president were once again crushed under circumstances he couldn't control.

"That's it!" Marlene proclaimed and marched over to the lemur king. "Why do you have to be such a horrible guy to everyone? You bully Mort all the time and always insult everyone, and that doesn't even come close to what you did to Skipper who could, you know, be dead right now!"

"Dead!" Private jumped up panicked. "I thought we knew that he wasn't!"

Kowalski intercepted this. "We have already established that Skipper isn't dead. You know that, Marlene."

"But still! He should at least feel bad that he was the one who basically let Skipper fall into it! He may as well have just pushed him back into the fight and helped the captor!" Marlene exclaimed.

"Come on, don't ya think you're thinking of this the wrong way kinda?" asked Maurice. "I mean what could Julien have really done at the time? Well he could've done what he always does! A whole lotta nothin!"

"Hey! I didn't push de bossy penguin into de water! It was dat Hans-y guy! He was de one dat knocked out de Skipper! Then we ran out of bananas in de bur-y lappy sack and I dropped it but de freaky colory beaky guy found de stupid sack and ruined it by putting de stinky feather leader fish in it! I hate dat Hans-y guy!" Julien finished, glaring and crossing his arms.

Again, all the animals around him fell silent at the very detailed information from the king that could have been utterly useful had he said it a long time ago.

Maurice facepalmed. "That's it! I ain't takin up for you no more, Julien! What the heck is the matter with you!"

Meanwhile, Kowalski's right eye was twitching. "You knew this…THE WHOLE STINKING TIME?!"

Private shrunk back with a whimper, looking left and right for someone to cover his ear holes.

"OO BAD!" Rico shouted with an accusing flipper towards the lemur, this time picking up Marlene to hurl at the kingly lemur.

"Gah! Put me down!" Marlene cried.

"Uh, z'orry Maleen." Rico apologized and put down the otter, then looked around for something else to throw. He scooped up something else, and swung it by the handle like a nun chuck.

"I'm a Ferris wheel!" Mort said as he was spun around by his tail. He was flung by the heavy penguin out of the lab and into the main room of the penguins' HQ. "Now I am an owie helicopter! …Owie!"

"Oh my gosh, Mort, again!" Marlene gasped, turning to glare at the manic penguin.

"Uh, z'orry Maleen, 'gain." Rico shrugged.

"Stupid Mort!" King Julien said in disappointment. "How dare he be leaving when his king didn't get to say what he had to!"

Marlene rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh. "Are you okay, Mort?" She called to the small lemur.

"I hear the helicopter!" Mort proclaimed from the other room.

Marlene looked back at the group looking worried. "I think he may have hit his head."

"Ey, wazzat?" Rico asked, also hearing the low hum of whirring machinery. "He'copper."

Private furrowed his brows. "Did you hit your head too, Rico?"

"Nah ah!" The manic penguin denied, insulted, although he didn't know why. He had hit his head a few times on previous missions and by multiple accidents on occasions. So he did hit his head at one point or many in his life. He still snapped at the small penguin though. He felt bad so he pulled the private into a crushing hug, turning the poor kid blue. "C'mere. Ah z'orry."

Private gulped, losing feeling in his lungs. "I-It's okay R-Rico…I sh-shouldn't have asked… "

"Wait a minute…" Kowalski started walking into the main part of the HQ with an intrigued expression. "Do any of you hear that?"

"_I_ hear it!" Mort declared.

Marlene narrowed her eyes, stepping closer out the lab door. "I hear it too…what is that? It sounds like…"

"Ah he'copper!" announced Rico.

"No, no, I know that sound…" Kowalski tried to identify the sound, placing his earhole under the ladder where the hatch was. "It's no helicopter…In fact, it kind of sounds like-"

"Well I don't hear anything!" King Julien said. "I don't even know why I even bothered trying to tell you anything in de first of places! You all probably know dat de Blow-Joe guy is attacking de zoo in his poddy thingy!"

Again, a silence as everyone stared at the king and his unspoken valuable information.

Private gasped. "Dr. Blowhole? He's here? What if he and Hans are working together again! What if they _both _took Skippah!"

"The bottlenose has come back for revenge!" Kowalski growled. "And of course he'd use Skipper to get to us or weaken us in numbers! That fiending genius!"

Maurice blinked. "I thought you said Skipper could take care of himself out there in Hoboken."

Rico grabbed the aye-aye lemur by the shoulders, shaking him and shouting in his face. "AH OO CRAZY!?"

"Maurice, this is Blowhole we're talking about here. He's completely different from any of those senseless villains in New Jersey." Kowalski explained. "OF COURSE he'd have something to do with Skipper's disappearing! Why couldn't I have seen it before!"

"Maybe because Dr. Blowhole has a mechanical fortune cookie and can see whatever is in his favor." Private suggested.

Kowalski growled. "Always…gets the…good…STUFF...!"

"What are we going to do?" Marlene asked.

"We'll take care of him, lead him away from the zoo if we have to." Kowalski sighed.

"We will?" Private asked, shocked and not at all wanting to do such.

"_Yes_." Kowalski narrowed his eyes.

"Anything we can do to help?" asked Maurice. He couldn't just hide while they risked their lives doing all the work and taking on that psychotic dolphin.

"No, you should all stay here like any civilian would." the analyst told them sternly.

"I'm not no civilian, man. Skipper did say at one point that all of us were honorary penguins." Maurice reasoned.

"I'm a penguin tooo!" Mort beamed.

Private saw sense in this, but he really didn't want to do this without more help. Without Skipper they barely stood a chance. "They do have a point, K'walski…"

"Private, they don't have a poi-"

Julien jumped forward, bouncing excitedly on his feet. "Can I be coming too? I want to be seeing Blow-Joe! I am coming with you silly penguins!"

"Nah ah!" Rico refused.

"We're sorry, Julien, but you cannot come with us. If something goes wrong we can't be worrying about civilian safety if we need to act." Kowalski explained, already climbing to the top of the ladder with Private and Rico right behind him.

"I'll heeelp!" Mort offered, failing to climb the ladder.

"Nobody is wanting your help, they want de kings help obviously!" King Julien proclaimed, pushing past all the penguins to get to the top of the ladder. He sent all three penguins tumbling down the ladder and into a heap on the ground. "Oh Blow-Joe! Your favoritest king is here and he wants one of your Seggy-ways! Hello? Oh look, dere he is! He is coming down to meet me!"

The analyst pulled himself free of the penguin pile and started climbing back up the ladder. "Come on!" Kowalski growled as an instruction for his two other teammates to get up and follow him. He was out the hatch before the private and the weapon's expert even got halfway up.

"I wish Skippah was here!" Private said over the whirring that was oddly getting louder.

When Kowalski got to the top of the makeshift ice flow, one look up at the sky had the analyst's eyes doubling in size. A giant flying pod was indeed flying down into the zoo, only problem was, it was crashing and from here he could see that the panel concealing the engine was on fire.

"It is so nice dat he is able to find de parking down here in de city. Normally it's kinda hard to do." Julien said.

Kowalski shook his head. "H-He's no-not parking…" the analyst stammered. "He's…CRASHING!"

"Crashing?" Private repeated, just finishing helping the last of the mammals up the ladder, the otter having been the last to come out from the hatch.

The pod was coming down full speed in their direction, electricity sparking from it as it fell from the sky.

"Happy New Yeeear!" Mort clapped happily at the 'fireworks'.

Maurice pointed up at the sky. "He's really going to crash that thing like that?"

Marlene blinked. "Since he's not really, you know, stopping, I'm going to go with yeah."

"This would never fly if Skippah was here." Private shook his head solemnly, feeling the heat from the closing in ball of flaming metal on his feathers.

"Yup." Rico agreed, nodding his head.

"_**FOR THE LOVE OF EINSTEIN'S BOXERS, EVERYONE TAKE COVER!"**_ Kowalski screamed seconds before the impact.


	17. Arrival

**Authors Note: Thanks for all de amazing reviews and follows! Did I mention dat I love you happy little heads? Keep reviewing if you will! The next chapters already packaged and ready for shipping!**

**~Natty**

* * *

_~PoM~_

"**FOR THE LOVE OF EINSTEIN'S BOXERS, EVERYONE TAKE COVER**!" Kowalski screamed seconds before the impact.

"GAH!" Marlene cried as she dropped to the ground along with everyone else.

Maurice covered his head. "Man, this NEVER happened back in Madagascar! I'm catchin a crate back after this!"

"RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, IT'S DE RED NIGHT GOBLIN! HE'S RETURNED!" King Julien shouted, using Mort as a standing shield.

Private lifted his head from the ground, having dropped down next to Rico. "Does this mean Cupid's back too?" He asked, referring to his old reindeer flame. Next to him, the weapons expert with his flippers covering his head shrugged.

"Are we on the naughty list?" Mort asked. The mouse lemur being the only one not to drop to the ground when told. Mort bounced on his feet at the thought of being naughty again just like back in Madagascar.

"Mort, GET DOWN!" Kowalski yelled, tackling the tiny lemur to the ground (away from Julien who then grabbed Maurice as a shield) and using his own penguin body to cover Mort.

Not a second later did the pod fly right over their heads and over the penguin island. The pod was pulled up from the inside. It went over the habitat wall, skidding across the zoo path and finally stopping in front of the lemur habitat, crashing into the wall there.

Maurice, Marlene, King Julien, Rico, Kowalski, Mort, and Private lifted their heads to see the end results. They all sighed in relief, save for Mort who was too ignorant to understand that they could've all just been crushed by that blazing hull.

The living artillery stowage unit, Rico, uncovered his head and sat up, blinking. He was a bit disappointed that the orbed ship didn't at least explode. Nope, there was no kaboom from it. It would have been nice if there was, but no, it was just lying on the ground ten feet away, smoking. There weren't even any cries of pain. What a bummer on his mood. "Awww…"

Private stood up and dusted off his feathers. No one was harmed, that was a relief for the young private. Sure zoo property was damaged and would need repairing, also they might have to take on Dr. Blowhole, but he supposed it could have been much worse than it was. The situation would have been ten times worse if there were any people around to witness it. "It's lucky the zoo is closed today, isn't it?" the Brit inquired.

Kowalski nodded breathlessly in agreement, getting up in shaky anxious steps to investigate the crash. It was survivable, he noted. Their enemy could possibly be injured or a little shaken up at worst but nothing critical. This meant they still had to prepare to fight the mad dolphin when he revealed himself. No matter what they'd do whatever they could to protect this zoo, city, even the entire world and all its inhabitants from Blowhole. And…if the dolphin had done something with their leader…well, there was no doubt that they'd make him pay for that too.

"Private, Rico, be ready." The analyst instructed them sternly.

"Aye K'walski." Private nodded, running over to jump the habitat wall to join the analyst in surrounding the fallen craft. "Come on, Rico."

The weapons specialist nodded and followed the young penguin over the wall, joining his two teammates in surrounding the pod.

"You're surrounded, bottle-nose! Come out with your fins up and we won't cause as much physical harm to you as first intended!" Kowalski announced.

The pod opened with a hissing of releasing air as smoke poured out of the damaged hull. A figure emerged from the cloud of smoke and Hans the puffin stumbled out, very dazed.

"Hans?" Private stared, surprised.

"Don't shoot…" the puffin staggered back and forth dizzily. "I swear Mr. Danish security chief…I did not mean to fill your car with the piranha~ Ughhh…" Hans fell flat on his face on the concrete.

"Oh get up, you nancycat! My landing was ten times better than all of your driving put together!" Skipper rolled his eyes as he exited the round vehicle.

"SKIPPAH!" Private ran up to hug him as tight as he could, burying his face in his leader's feathers.

"'KIPPER!" Rico ran and engulfed both shortest penguins in a hug, lifting them both off the ground.

Kowalski sighed in relief. "It's a relief to have you back, Skipper." The analyst walked up to his leader though putting into place some distance between himself and his hugging team. He wasn't one for all the emotional stuff.

"C'mere." Rico used his head to gesture that Kowalski come join in.

"Ah, no, no, that's quite alright…really…besides, I'm not one for public displays of affection- HUGH!" Kowalski's protests were rudely cut off as he was pulled hard flush up against three other feathery bodies.

"This is wonderful!" Private smiled, happy to be surrounded by his completed team. "Look at us, we're all here together safe and sound. I missed you so much, Skippah!"

"I missed you too, young Private." Skipper smiled down at the small penguin. "I expect that Kowalski kept things up and running in my absence."

"Yup." Rico nodded.

Private voiced his opinion. "K'walski was good, but no one could ever replace you."

Skipper nodded. "What about you Kowalski? These two give you any trouble?"

Rico and Private looked at the analyst, waiting for his input about them.

"Well, they weren't initially too much to handle, that is, they were more concerned about your disappearance than anything else which lessened the ability to fully focus…" Kowalski trailed off.

Skipper rolled his eyes and pushed the four penguins hug apart to slap the analyst across the face.

"I- I love you!" Kowalski blurted suddenly.

The leader nodded with a satisfied smirk. "Much better!"

There was an overreacted whining moan that caused the four commandos to turn their attention to the puffin that was now sitting up on the ground.

"I think I have the whiplash…" Hans complained. "Could I get a hug too? It would make me feel _so_ much better than now~"

"You!" Private exclaimed at the puffin in anger, stomping over to the Dane and pointing a flipper at him. "You took Skippah from us!"

"Uuuh, yeah~ I did." The Dane shrugged, not seeing the kid's point. Obviously he took Skipper, he brought him back didn't he? Something he never wanted to do by the way!

"How could you do such a thing!" Private demanded an explanation. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Oh you want to know what I say?~ I say…GET YOUR WINGTIPS OUT OF MY FACE! It is none of your concern anyway~"

Kowalski glared at the vile puffin. "When you abduct our commanding officer it's immediately of our top concern! Now what tortures have you put him through, you imprudent DANE!"

"OO BAD!" Rico shouted.

"If I am bad for wanting some alone time with my own frienemy then you are all OUT OF YOUR MINDS!" Hans glared at the three penguins and then added with a huff, "No good palsy stealers!"

"Stand down, boys. The puffin didn't torture me, but even if he did, you know there's nothing that can take me down. I can't be broken by a little pain." Skipper reassured. "I eat pain for breakfast with a side of ache along with a steaming hot cup of agony coffee. I may not always look it, but I'm a tough bird to fry."

"You look a lot of things, Skipper." Hans flirted. "Very ruggedly _handsome _things~"

"Do something for me, Hans." Skipper requested.

"Anything for _youuu_~"

"The next time you're going to kidnap me, do me a favor and _don't_, okay?"

"I'll try to remember for next time." The puffin said, sighing as he watched the other three penguins excitedly accept the leader back. They reminded him vaguely of children waiting for a parent to come home from work, and the moment the parent walks through the door the kids are already running up to them, bombarding them with news of what they missed.

"Oh Skippah, as soon as we get back inside our HQ I'm going to make you some of my special tea, and oh! Skippah! I've been practicing my kicks just like you told me to!" Private said ecstatically.

"I can't wait to see them in action." The leader smiled down at the young soldier.

"Kablamo!" Rico cried proudly.

Kowalski nodded in agreement. "While you were gone Rico and I successfully created a new line of assorted dynamite sticks. Still the raw exploding power of a regular stick of TNT but without the earsplitting sound of a detonation to give away our positions to the enemy."

The weapons expert brought his voice down to a whisper to show an example of the silence. "_Kablamo…_" Rico whispered.

"Well done, boys. I'm impressed." praised their leader.

It made the puffin sick. Skipper never hugged_ him_ back like that or approved of anything _he_ did. It was like he didn't even exist, not unless he was causing some kind of trouble or mayhem or if he was working alongside Dr. Blowhole.

Skipper never ate anything _he _made for him or gave critique on any of_ his_ fighting moves. Hans had trained for years under the Danish embassy, far longer than that tiny fluff ball of a penguin Private ever trained in his life even. The puffin had self-defense down to mastery. He purposely made it so that he was evenly matched to Skipper and to impress him.

Not like it wasn't nice feeling the leader penguin holding him down. It always sent shivers down his spine the way the body weight of the penguin would shift over him in the right place. He didn't even fight back as Skipper arrested him all those years ago. The handcuffs only added to his almost fulfilled fantasies he'd have at night when he was alone. All that time ago the attention from the penguin was on him and nothing delighted him more. Now he was pushed aside, in the background while those three dainty, pathetic, unworthy of Skipper's attention, _penguins_, swept in and whisked him away from the Dane.

He didn't even get to speak with the leader like he had wanted, no he didn't even get to do that! He just stood there forgotten, watching their heartfelt reunion. He couldn't let this go, he needed to tell Skipper how he felt and have the penguin believe him. Then, hopefully, they could have something between them. It could be friendship, or they could even be pen pals on the internet! He wasn't particularly picky! He'd take anything offered. But he couldn't just leave with nothing at all!

"Skipper…" Hans spoke up, getting the attention of the leader and his team. They looked at him like they were surprised he was still here, like they expected him to just leave while he could. He wasn't a coward, and he'd show them that he wasn't. He could face things when he wanted. They'd see.

"What is it, Hans? Shouldn't you be halfway back to Hoboken by now?"

"Well, yes but there is something I want to talk to you about… It…it is important~" The puffin stammered.

"Yeah?" The leader asked.

Hans looked at the ground, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well I…I just want to say that-"

"I believe I've spotted the problem." Kowalski interrupted. He was over by the totaled pod, looking over its wreckage and broken bits.

Hans blinked, surprised. Perhaps Skipper's second in command was not as stupid as the puffin once thought if he could successfully see through his feelings. But why was the tall penguin standing over by the pod though? That was the one thing that didn't make sense to the Dane. Also how the analyst was able to tell that he was about to make a confession of his love. That he didn't get either. "You…do?"

"Without so much as a single doubt, yes I do." the analyst nodded in confirmation. "It seems that your operational mode of transportation has been rendered not so operational."

Oh, that. The puffin stared. _What an idiot. _"Oh, uuh, really? I hadn't noticed it~"

"Oh, right, that." Skipper nodded. "Can it fly, Kowalski?"

"Negative, Skipper. It is completely useless for transport of any kind. I'm afraid it can't get him back to New Jersey." Kowalski explained.

"Hey dum-dum, this he has a name, you know~!" Hans glared.

The analyst rolled his eyes, ignoring the puffin as he continued with his analysis to his leader. "However, I have _two_ other options at the ready, sir."

Hans hated that penguin Kowalski, so, _so_ very much. "I am not getting tied to that rocket again! You better forget that!"

"Make that _one_ other option, Skipper." Kowalski then corrected.

Skipper raised his brow curiously. "And what would that be exactly?"


	18. Departing Such Sweet Sorrow

_~PoM~_

**Central Park Zoo's Storage.**

Hans sighed. He was sorry Skipper even asked. The Dane was starting to wish to take the rocket home now. At least that one would only crush his bones possibly and not his emotions. He was sitting inside of a _crate_.

Kowalski's head popped up over the edge of the wooden box, looking down on him. "We're all set out here, Hans. This crate should ship you straight back to Hoboken in 5-6 business days. We would have opted for express one day shipping but you know, economy and all. We'll place a fragile sticker on it though, just to be safe."

"Oh, well uuh, thank you~" The puffin looked around the box, starting to really consider this situation. Okay now he really wished he was strapped to a rocket right about now. "But uuh, could I perhaps speak to Skipper? I am not too sure about this…_transportation_." He didn't know what to call this except for downright horrible and degrading, also embarrassing.

"There's absolutely no need for worry. This mode of transportation is perfectly safe." Kowalski reassured. There was a large explosion in the background, causing both birds' eyes to double in size. The analyst turned his head back to glare over his shoulder. "Rico! What have I told you about putting explosives in the crates!"

"Z'orry 'Walski!" Rico called out of sight.

Kowalski nodded in satisfaction for the apology and turned back to the puffin. He saw a glare staring back at him. "Ah heh… disregard that. There are no explosives in _your_ crate, obviously… uh, but I'll double check, just to be sure…but uh, the United Parcel Service has a high initial delivery rate of 98.5%."

Hans nodded with his eyes narrowed to slits. "And what about the remaining 1.5? Hmm? What about that?"

The analyst's eyes widened a bit, not expecting the closer look at the doubt of this situation. "Oh, ah, well…" Kowalski scratched his head, darting his eyes away from the Dane's harsh look. "You know…the economy and all…" He gave a quick wave along with a reassuring smile. "Have a safe trip!"

The top to the crate was hastily slammed shut and darkness surrounded the puffin as the light was blocked from the outside. Only his dim form and bright eyes were visible in the dark box. There was the mechanic whirring of an electric screwdriver and he was sealed in. There was silence and the patters of four pairs of penguin feet walking away. Hans didn't really have a choice but to listen as he heard them speaking. They probably thought that since the crate was shut and they distanced themselves from it that they were out of earshot but the puffin could still hear every word they were saying.

"Well that was taken care of nicely if I do say so myself." Kowalski commented, dusting off his flippers. "I thought for sure he'd retaliate in some way against our efforts to send him back."

"I'm glad he's gone. All he does is cause trouble to Skippah anyway." He heard the small one say.

"Yup." agreed the crazy one with a grunt.

Hans shrunk back against the crate wall, feeling like his chest had been punched repeatedly. Skipper didn't even come to see him off…

"Hello silly penguins!" King Julien's voice sounded throughout the storage. "Eh, where is de bossy penguin?"

Kowalski answered the lemur. "He wasn't feeling well so I prescribed him for some R & R."

"Skippah deserves a little rest and relaxation after all he's been through. Today's been hard on all of us." added the private.

_Hard for all of them_, the Dane mocked in his head. Like they were so special!

"I know just what is needed to help your relaxiness!" the king lemur said. "I am throwing de biggest, most awesomest welcoming back to de zoo party eva _tonight_!"

The analyst shook his head. "Julien, I don't think a party is going to offer Skipper the proper rest he requires. He has a massive headache and sore muscles from the crash he endured. He is in no way fit for celebration of any kind."

_Oh shut up already! Skipper is not some delicate kitten! He can actually be very wild at the parties~ You just have to give him the right things to drink. _Hans rolled his eyes. Did they know _nothing_ about the penguin?

"Everybody is gonna be dere! And it is not you who gives de orders! It is de Skipper who will be deciding on whether he is to be going!" Julien argued. "So he is going! Case being closed! And eh, speaking of de cases, where de heck is dat colorful beaky freak? I am hoping he is being gone already!"

The _what?_ The puffin growled to himself. That idiotic ringy-tailed little-!

Kowalski chuckled. "Not to worry, we took care of him."

_How can they not know I am hearing them? I can hear everything they are saying_! Hans thought bitterly.

"Oh dat is good you got him out of de zoo before I could get my hands upon him! Yeah, I _so_ was going to get Maurice to like, beat him up! But anyway, you are all invited to my party in de Skipper's honor!"

"I liiike beating up!" Mort announced.

"Hey guys." Marlene greeted as she entered the storage room. "What's the word on the whole party situation? Who's going?"

"The whole zoo's invited." Maurice added in, showing his presence in the storage. It was hard to tell who was in the room when you were in a box.

"Alright fine." Kowalski sighed, voicing his surrender to the lemurs. "I'll see what I can do to get Skipper to go to the-"

"This better not be a mutiny meeting I'm walking into." Skipper cut in, surprising all the animals and causing them all to gasp, including Hans. "Kowalski, I told you that if you're ever planning mutinies you have to _take out_ the one you're trying to throw over! Have I failed as a commander? How many times do I have to tell you the same thing over and over!"

"No mutiny to be had here, Skipper. And your previous orders have been taken care of. The threat has been neutralized, packed up and shipped back to where it came from." Kowalski saluted.

Han's eyes widened sadly. Skipper…was behind this? He…ordered him to be sent back? Like this? In a crate? With his dignity stripped away from him? He was ending their interaction THIS WAY? That was so cold! The puffin felt tears start to build up in his eyes. Skipper didn't even say goodbye to him…

"What? Oh, uh, that's good." Skipper said distractedly. "Good job, Kowalski."

"Is something the matter, Skippah?" Private asked, feeling concerned.

Hans waited anxiously, nodding even though he couldn't be seen, for his sweet penguin to go on. He knew Skipper wasn't going to go through with this of course, he never doubted that the penguin might have felt something other than hatred for him. _Go on Skipper, tell them. Tell them you don't want me in the crate to Hoboken. You know you don't. We do have something! Go on and tell it to them! I wish I could see the look on their faces when you tell them that we-_

"Nothing's wrong, Private. I'm fine." Skipper answered, rubbing the now smiling military student on the head.

The puffin's heart almost stopped right then and there. Everything was frozen for him in that moment, a lump forming in his throat and his chest going completely numb. He didn't notice the sudden scattering of the animals or the heavy footsteps coming towards his crate. His wooden prison was lifted off the ground, not at all gently. He was bounced around roughly inside that wooden box. That was when he figured out his heart had been fragile all along, and now, as he was being loaded into the back of the truck, being sent off to New Jersey, he realized it was not only fragile but broken too.


	19. Hobroken Boxes

**Authors Note: Here ya go! Another update! And make sure you check out my new story entitled 'Habits Die'. _Yes_, its another Skans fic...dont look at me like that! You know they're perfect! **

**~Natty**

* * *

~PoM~

**New Jersey: Underwater Lair. **

"Eh, what are we supposed to do with this?" asked a voice with a Boston accent. It was one of Blowhole's henchmen and he was gesturing to a wooden box in the middle of the floor. Lobster #1 tried to lift it but obviously he couldn't lift a box that was many times his size. "A little help?"

Another lobster, Lobster #2, walked up and poked at the crate. "Did Doc order a package?"

"How'd it even get down here? We're thousands of miles under the ocean." A third lobster, #3, walked over blinking.

Lobster #1 shrugged. "Some of the other guys brought it down. It was addressed to Hoboken but you know how Doc doesn't like not knowing things. I lost a cousin to Doc not knowing something."

"We better tell him about this package then before there's all sorts'a trouble." Lobster #3 urged. He needed this job, if only for his life alone.

"I'm on it." Lobster #2 reassured, crawling up to an intercom. He clicked a button and leaned in forward to the speaker. "Paging Dr. Blowhole. Dr. Blowhole, please report to the loading dock. We got a package here for ya." The lobster then stepped back and waited patiently.

Lobster #3 looked at the first lobster, striking up conversation. "A cousin, huh?"

Lobster #1 sighed, shoulders slumping as he nodded. "Yeah, it was real harsh."

"Sorry for your loss there." Lobster #3 put a claw on Lobster #1's shoulder.

"Yeah, me too." Lobster #2 joined in. "It's gotta be tough."

Lobster #3 nodded. "I uh, lost a brother once."

"Oh man, sorry." Lobster #1 sympathized.

Lobster #2 nodded. "Sorry."

"LOBSTERS!" a loud voice shouted, snapping them all back to attention. Dr. Blowhole rolled up in his Segway, staring down at his henchmen looking quite annoyed. "Why the heck did you call me all the way down here? I mean re-e-e-eally what could be so important?"

"Package for ya, Doc." Lobster #2 said, his claw pointing over the crate that was just now noticed by the mad dolphin.

"Oh." Blowhole blinked. "Well what's in it?"

"Don't know." Lobster #2 shrugged.

Dr. Blowhole narrowed his eyes, getting more annoyed with his incompetent employees. He swore he'd boil all of them if they weren't such cheap labor. "Well don't you think you should have opened it _before_ calling me here?" All the dolphin got in response was three frightened looks from the lobsters. He sighed. "I guess it's too late now. Fine, just open it then!"

Lobsters 1 & 2 got to work on opening the crate. They picked up a discarded crowbar from somewhere off to the side and began trying to pry it open. As Lobster #2 pulled on the crowbar he was within earshot to hear what was going on inside. It sounded like all kinds of sadness in there. Literally.

"Eh, Doc? I think there's something wrong with your box. We should probably send it back and order a new one. I mean, who would want a sad box?" Lobster #2 shrugged.

"What on earth are you blabbering on about?" Dr. Blowhole questioned. "What's wrong with the box?"

"It appears to be crying, Doc."

"Boxes don't cry you imbeciles!" Blowhole shouted, using his Segway to lean forward enough to put his ear hole beside the crate. "What are you trying to pull over my- Hm, so it is a crying box. And oddly, I know that crying. Lobsters, open the box!" He ordered.

The three lobsters continued their work in prying the box open. Their efforts were successful and the sides of the box fell, revealing a sobbing and depressed little puffin, crying his eyes out in his wings on the only part of the box that was left underneath him.

Dr. Blowhole for one was surprised. "Hans? Where have you been? I haven't seen you for days! What are you doing in a _crate_?" the mad dolphin asked incredulously.

Hans looked up at the dolphin with red rimmed, tired eyes. The puffin took one look at the dolphin before bursting out sobbing again. The dolphin only reminded him of his sorrow. "H-Hi D-Dr. M-Mammal-fish…" The puffin sniffed.

"_Hi_." Blowhole said, rolling his eye.

"S-Sorry I-I'm late…I-It turns o-out that 5-6 b-business days is l-longer than I e-expected! Ahhhaaaaahhh!" Hans broke off crying.

"Why were you shipped here inside of a crate of all things?"

"B-because I nearly b-broke my leg last time I tr-traveled by the rocket…"

"You aren't making any sense!" Dr. Blowhole threw out his flippers exasperated and nearly fell off his Segway. Luckily the dolphin caught himself and growled. "At least tell me why you're crying so uncontrollably like this!"

Hans just sniffed, hiccuped, and stared at the dolphin with a quivering beak.

Blowhole sighed, knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere soon with the ridiculous puffin. "I swear I don't know why I de-e-e-eal with you!"

Everything was always so difficult with the Dane. Not only did it irritate him to no end but the puffin was the equivalency of a child, a complete whining and blubbering child. Sadly he only realized this _after _he took Hans in and teamed up with him. Apparently the Dane was _his _responsibility now.

Normally he'd kick him out or most likely dispose of him in ways that went against what animal rights wackos have been shouting for years, but he still needed him around for future plans. He was only doing this for the sake of his evil plots. Otherwise he would have thrown the darn puffin off to the side a LONG time ago.

"W-w-w-_why_ are you _crying_!" Blowhole shouted.

"I- I –I…!" Hans couldn't go on. "I-It is UNFAIR!"

The dolphin narrowed its eye. "Are you _mocking_ me? And what's so unfair?"

Hans was shaking with bottled up sadness and anger, and he finally let it all out at the top of his little puffin lungs. "OH, DR. MAMMAL-FISH! IT IS SO UNFAIR! THOSE STUPID CENTRAL PARK ZOO DAINTIES HAVE ALL OF SKIPPER'S AFFECTION! THEY LEAVE ME WITH NOTHING, AND I TRY AND TRY AND TRY…! I GO TO TALK TO SKIPPER AND HE HITS ME SO MANY TIMES WITH THE FLASHLIGHTS AND THE HAMMERS AND THE FLIPPERS AND HE WAS SO LOUD AND I STOP HIM BUT I HURT HIM SO I HAD TO BRING HIM TO HOBOKEN SO WE COULD TALK AND I TRY TO TELL HIM MY FEELINGS BUT HE DOESN'T LISTEN AND HE REJECTS ME AND YELLS TO BRING HIM BACK SO I DID AND THEN THAT STUPID KOWALSKI PUT ME IN A CRATE AND SKIPPER JUST LET HIM! ! ! AHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! ! ! !" The puffin broke down, howling and sobbing.

Dr. Blowhole blinked his one eye, thoroughly taken aback.

By this time most of the lobsters had surrounded the loading dock, all of them had heard the screaming and came to see what it was all about. Now they were all kind of regretting it and feeling a bit on the awkward side.

Lobster #3 whistled and nudged Lobster #55. "And I thought _I_ had issues..."


	20. Fate's Fortune

_~PoM~_

"Here ya go, ice cream always helps a broken heart from where it start." Lobster #78 handed him a whole carton and a spoon.

Hans looked at it. He'd been trying to stay fit for Skipper but…

The tears came rushing back and he quickly scooped the dairy product into his beak. It did help…a little bit…

He calmed down after an hour, at least enough to let the lobsters lead him to the pretty pink couch in the den. He enjoyed the lobsters. They were the only ones that were ever truly nice to him besides Dr. Blowhole. At first the Dane did have some doubts about doubling up living in both Hoboken and with the dolphin in his multiple lairs. He hadn't thought he could trust any of the New Jersey zoo animals or the mad dolphin, but the fish mammal had been nothing but kind, giving him things he needed like the Wi-Fi and an oven to bake his Danishes in.

The zoo animals weren't that bad. Lulu was nice and he didn't speak to Rhonda. Clemson pissed him off and he'd learned to steer clear of Savio since the last time the stupid snake tried to make a puffin snack out of him. Moving on because he didn't want to dawn on _that_…

The lobsters and the dolphin were really all he had. He was an outcast from his home country and shunned with disappointment by whatever family he had left. In his mind he wanted to believe he had Skipper too, but facts were facts, and he didn't truly have the penguin. Not at all and probably never will. His beloved penguin was not beloved of him and that was that. Now all he had to do was learn to live with that unforgiving fact. The only issue was that he didn't he could learn to live with it. He didn't even feel like living anymore. What was the point if he could never have the one that would make life worth living? If life wasn't worth living then he may as well just jump in that boiling pot in the back.

As the puffin thought about this he broke halfway out of his thoughts to take another spoonful of the fudge ice cream. It was his favorite…and he remembered Skipper knew that about him…

"Hmmm~" Hans let out a sad mumbled whine. He narrowed his eyes, grumbling to himself. "I bet those little dainties have no idea what is Skipper's favorite ice cream flavor!"

"There's a lot of things those three stupid peng-you-ins don't know. I wouldn't worry about it much. _Kowalski _doesn't even know how to make a mechanical fortune cookie that relies on the mathematics of simple probability to function. If you don't even know _that_ then you have no business in the fields of science."

"Oh, hello again, Dr. Mammal-fish." The puffin greeted, putting the spoon and the ice cream in front of him down on the mahogany coffee table. He wiped his gold eyes with the backs of his wings.

"Are you _still_ crying!" Blowhole shouted.

Hans flinched at the loud tone of voice, remembering that even though the dolphin was nice to him, the mammal could still be unintentionally mean at times. Sort of scary too. "I..."

"You don't have to cry anymore."

"I…don't?"

"No, you don't." The dolphin smirked. "I have solved everything."

"You have?" Hans blinked, stunned. He was smiling the next thing he knew of it.

"Yes. I just said so." Dr. Blowhole rolled his eye, starting to roll down the halls with his Segway.

The puffin rushed out of the den and after the dolphin trying to keep up through the long hallways, leaving the disappointed lobsters behind in the den. "Truly and really? Oh thank you, Dr. Mammal-fish! You talked to Skipper for me?!"

"No."

"No?" Hans frowned, not understanding. How did the dolphin solve anything if he didn't talk to Skipper for him? "Well have you zapped him with some kind of machine of love or~"

"No, _again_. But what I _have_ done is finish our plans."

"Oh…" The puffin blinked, disappointed and slumping his shoulders. He didn't care about _plans_! What did plans have to do with anything? He just wanted a second chance with Skipper! He didn't feel like taking part in any kind of evil scheme right now! Couldn't the mammal see how much he was hurting?

"I wanted to thank you, Hans." Dr. Blowhole said.

Hans blinked again. "Wha? You did? Why is that?"

"I had no idea how I was going to go through with my plans but because of you I now know _exactly_ what I'm going to do to get back at Skipper and his team of elite peng-you-ins. Because of you, Hans, I now have a reason- other than my own hatred- to finally dispose of that blasted Skipper."

Hans' eyes widened. When he agreed to the dolphin's terms of partnership and to help plot against the penguins, he never actually checked the box on the form that said he'd help kill anyone. He now guesses that the mad dolphin never looked over that form and expected him to carry through with a murder plan. The Dane was a lot of things he admitted, a traitor, a backstabber, a double agent spy, a bit of a whiner, alright so he was a bit of a coward when it came to things and he didn't always finish what he started… But he wasn't a cold blooded murderer that was for sure.

"Look, uuh, Dr. Mammal-fish… you don't really have to_ kill_ Skipper~" The puffin rubbed the back of his neck. "I, uuh, well this is awkward but I do realize now that maybe I have overdone a few things. You know? I ambushed my only frienemy and expected him to fall head over the heels immediately like I have…but…I see the error of my ways as some say it and I think I'm going to go back to New York to apologize to Skipper. Do you perhaps have any subway tokens I could-" Hans saw the cruel look the dolphin was giving him. "I can walk I think~"

"Apologize…TO _SKIPPER_?!" Blowhole yelled.

Hans took steps back as the dolphin loomed dangerously closer on his Segway. "Ehm~"

"Is THAT your plan!? To just say you're SORRY to that stupid peng-you-in and all will be forgiven? Is that it?"

"I-It doesn't have to be…I could always…change it…" The puffin trailed. He didn't understand what was happening. Everything was fine a second ago, and now he felt threatened. "I don't understand…"

"Well, let me help you understand, Hans!"

Hans nodded. "That would be nice~"

"Skipper…" The dolphin started, circling the puffin as he spoke. "…is our enemy."

"Half~" the puffin pointed out.

"What?"

"Half." Hans repeated. "Skipper is my frienemy, he is only half my enemy~"

"Right…" Blowhole rolled his eye. "_That_ nonsense you're always talking about…"

_Nonsense?_ The puffin raised a brow. He truly didn't understand at all. "Dr. Mammal-fish, I don't-"

"Let me explain something to you, _Dane_." Dr. Blowhole insulted the bird's heritage. "You cannot both _hate_ and _love_ someone. It is either one or the _OTHER_! Lest the _LOVE_ cancel out the _HATE_! Do you get it? You have to CHOOSE, right now for me! You either waste my time or I have use for you." the dolphin glared, backing the puffin further to the wall. "Choose wisely."

Hans blinked, wincing when he backed up as far as he could, now cornered against the wall with an evil dolphin looming over him. He… thought the mammal was his friend… "I…I don't…" the puffin trailed, shaking his head. How could he have been so fooled to think that his horrible creature ever cared about him?

"Well I have good news for you, Hans. It turns out I do have some use for you after all. Isn't that just swimming?"

"I guess..."

"I had some modifications done to one of my old devices…" Blowhole said. "Sadly there was a flaw in its design. It works of course, but it's not at all painless. In order for it to work properly, the subject has to have been through a lot of pain. You've been in a lot of it already but forlornly it's not enough for the machine. It's a sacrifice I am willing to make. We all have to make sacrifices." The dolphin shrugged. "I hope you understand that this was all just business." He pressed a button on his Segway, the device slowly emerging from the dashboard, another part of its modifications.

"_**MIND-JACKER 2.0" **_the big voice boomed.

Hans gasped, pressing himself harder against the wall. There wasn't anywhere to run and he was out of options. He closed his eyes just before the rays from the device engulfed his head and his mind started to tingle. Then it started to burn, and burn and burn and burn and_ burn_

"_AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...!_" he screamed in white agony. His body crumpled to the ground and he felt everything start to slip away, every thought, every moment he could ever remember until all he knew was the blinding pain and soon he couldn't see anything at all.

"I never actually LIKED you." Blowhole laughed and shook his head. "I was never your friend, Hans. You really should have figured that out sooner. Poor judgment on your part, but I'm not really complaining."

"Ughh…" The puffin shook as he struggled to lift his head.

"Oh, Haaans? Can you hear me?"

Hans groaned in response.

Dr. Blowhole nodded. "So what have you chosen? Me or Skipper?"

The puffin looked up at the dolphin, shaking his head in confusion. "Who's _Skipper_~?"


	21. The Return

_~PoM~_

Private sighed happily in his lounge chair. It was so nice to finally have things back to normal. The small penguin looked to his left to see Kowalski and Rico relaxing in their own chairs. The sun was high up in the sky, shining down on them and warming their feathers. He turned to the right to see his leader resting in a chair next to him as well. Oh was it ever splendid to have everything the way it's supposed to. "It sure was nice of Julien to throw you that party the other night, wasn't it Skippah?"

Ever since Skipper had been brought back to the zoo yesterday afternoon, Private hadn't left his side since then. Kowalski had called it something resembling withdrawal and said it would soon pass as everything settled back. But Private begged to differ. He swore he'd never leave his leader's side again, never ever.

Skipper turned to his left, looking at the private through his sunglasses. "Yeah, it was fun I guess. I've got to hand it to Ring-tail though, the guy really knows how to cater."

"Imported kippers." Kowalski commented. "Strange I didn't know triple express two hour shipping even _existed_…"

Private nodded. "Must have cost the zoo a lot though."

"The zoo?" Skipper shot up. "Wait a minute, just where did our royal pain _get _the funding for this welcome back shindig?"

Kowalski took out his smartphone, unlocking it with a slide of his flipper. "Should be but a moment, Skipper." The analyst said and logged into the zoo's online banking account. He looked at the numbers with a frown and nodded. "Just as I've suspected. The zoo's entire budget for the month has been completely cleaned out. Not even enough left over for a single sardine."

Skipper growled in annoyance. "Just like a lemur, to take everything and leave everyone else without a dime."

"But we can't eat dimes, Skippah." Private said. His stomach growled and he looked down, frowning and rubbing at it. "I'm awful hungry right now just thinking about it."

"Don't you worry your little gut, soldier. We'll take care of it like we always do." Skipper reassured, patting Private on the stomach. "We'll just mail the bill to the Hoboken Zoo. Problemo solved."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Private asked, not too sure about that plan.

The leader sat up in his chair, looking disbelievingly at the young penguin. "Poor naïve Private, of course it is! What has _New Jersey_ ever had to offer us?" He said the city in disgust.

"Lyme disease?" Kowalski shrugged.

Skipper nodded in most certain agreement. "Oh yeah, totally." He clinked his drink in cheers with the analyst, over Private's head. The leader took a sip from his cold beverage and sighed. "The place is foul, rotten, and nasty! Just like-"

"Hans!" Private yelled in alarm, dropping his own cup in shock.

Skipper chuckled. "Exactly."

"No, Skippah, look! It's actually-!"

That was all the leader heard before something jumped on the back of his chair, launching him up in the air, his glasses flying off as well. He shouted in alarm about six feet up before falling back down. Before Skipper could hit the concrete of the island like he expected, he was suddenly caught in strong and gentle wings, being held bridal style with a small yelp. The leader penguin looked up at his savior in surprise before narrowing his eyes at the bright beak.

"Hello Skipper!" Hans the puffin greeted, smiling down at his catch.

"Aw! Hans!" Skipper complained in disappointment. "I thought we were finally rid of you for a while! I even stole all your subway tokens! See?" The leader looked over to Rico who was shaking a jar of coins. "How is it you've come back already? I thought Blowhole had you on his leash!"

"Blowhole gave me the train fare, ja." The puffin shrugged, oddly saying the dolphin's actual name for once.

"Why on earth would he do that?" Skipper asked with a scoff. "What? Is he sick of your childish reindeer games too?"

Hans laughed. "No, no, of course he is not! Blowhole and I have been getting along all well~ We're even the best of chumsies! I just told him I wanted to see you and he understood that, gave me the monies and now here I am being with you! I wanted the pleasures to see my favorite frienemy again! So how are things? I ask you this because you never call or write as much as you used to. I get absolutely no opportunities for idle chit chat with you. It makes me sad!"

"I don't care _what _it makes you! Put me on the ground where I belong and not in your disgusting arms!"

The puffin blinked but put the penguin down as requested. He didn't look like the rude comment fazed him, it didn't even look like he acknowledged it. "Are you feeling the better now?"

Skipper was satisfied when he felt his feet touch the ground again and quickly dusted the non-existent stench off his body. "Very." He muttered.

Kowalski glared at the puffin with crossed flippers, all three subordinate members of the penguin team standing up and out of their chairs, and the chairs having disappeared without a trace save for Skipper's overturned chair just a few feet away.

Private imitated the analyst's exact look of hatred for the tropical bird. "K'walski used the last of his show-off jar coins to ship you back to Hoboken! Where you rightfully belong! You shouldn't be back here anyhow!" How dare that bird just come back after what he did! Did he think he could try to take their leader away from them again? Well the private had news for the puffin! They wouldn't let him do anything to Skipper! Not ever again!

"Yeh!" Rico agreed, staring angrily at the puffin.

"I was saving up for a Frearson, Reed and Prince, screw driver!" Kowalski complained. "Similar to a Phillips but the Frearson has a more pointed 75° V shape. Advantaged over the Phillips drive by its one size fits all screw sizes! Often found in _marine _hardware stores and requires a Frearson screwdriver or bit to work properly! Something ELSE I happened to be saving for! The tool recess is a _perfect_, sharp cross, allowing for higher applied torque, unlike the rounded, tapered _Phillips_ head, which was designed to cam out at high TORQUE! And _I_ can't get one because some conniving Germanic fowl _didn't want to go home yet!_" the analyst mocked some pleading that was said the other day from the Dane. "I mean, REALLY NOW! Why are you even here again?!"

Hans had no idea what any of them were talking about. He wasn't here the other day! He was busy working on the evil schemes with Dr. Blowhole. He hadn't been here in months! It had to be about a good four now. Even though all the information the penguins were telling him was completely false in his mind, he didn't go into it. He only ever referred to Skipper when he would spontaneously meet with the penguins to enact one of his plans. It didn't matter what the other three penguins were saying to him. He didn't come to see them, he came to see Skipper! "Oh Skippsy? Would you care to join me in a long walk on the sea shore? I believe you'd find it to being nice~"

"Pass." Skipper rolled his eyes.

"Oh you sure?"

And Skipper rolled his eyes AGAIN. "_Positive_."

"Very well, I suppose I cannot force you to do the tagging along with me~"

"That's right!" Private cut in, still glaring and trying to sound forceful to the puffin. "Not with us here you won't! You'll never hurt Skippah while we're around! Do you understand? Never!"

Hans blinked again confused by the hostility the three other penguins that weren't Skipper were showing him. What did he ever do to them? Was this about easily capturing them to bait Skipper to the weapons lab? Because all he wanted that day was to see the leader again, just for fun! They couldn't possibly blame him for that could they? Pfft, Blowhole was right. The three lesser penguins were a bunch of dainties! They were almost pathetic! Such stupids! "Who said anything about the hurting? I just want to spend some friendly time with you, Skipper, is all~ Nothing else."

"Nothing else is right." Skipper nodded, turning away from the Dane to walk away from him. He started leading his team out of their habitat. "You better get out of here before I really give you something friendly! Except, actually, it's not gonna be all that friendly at all! I want you gone by the time we come back, and if you're not then there's gonna be a serious problem between the two of us. Come on, boys."

Kowalski, Rico, and Private followed their leader without question, Private turning his beak up at the puffin as he climbed over the fence last with a 'hmph'.

Hans still didn't understand what their problem was or what their attitude towards him was for. His best friend Dr. Blowhole told him this would happen, that they would try to confuse him with phony abalonie stories. So for the sake of him and the dolphin's evil schemes he did the only thing he could do. He followed the penguins out of their habitat, getting right behind the private with a mischievous smirk.


	22. Worst I've Ever Had

**Authors Note: Review, Review! You know, hopefully. Tell me your thoughts cuz I wanna hear em! Very badly. **

**~Natty**

* * *

_~PoM~_

As the penguin team of four walked down the zoo paths, all was natural. They'd ditched the psycho puffin back at their habitat and they fully expected him to be gone by the time they got back from wherever. They didn't doubt for a second that Hans would leave. Who'd ever want any kind of problems with Skipper? Obviously only those seeking a death wish.

And so it came as a surprise when Private noticed they had a fifth head tailing them from behind, right close at the end of their single file line too. The puffin wasn't even trying to hide himself while following them. The Dane simply invited himself into their penguin line as if he were one of them and belonged in it the same as they did.

Kowalski stopped whistling as he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned his head to look down at Private behind him, having not noticed the trailing puffin in their group march.

After getting the analyst's attention, Private jabbed a flipper behind him to show him the problem.

Kowalski blinked upon seeing a silently waving Hans at the end of their penguin line. The sight was not only strange but baffled him. It seems this bird was stupider than he looked, which to the analyst was pretty stupid. He sighed with an eye roll, muttering something under his breath before tapping Rico in front of him.

"Huh?" Rico turned at the tap on his shoulder, shrugging at the analyst to ask what was wrong. When he saw Kowalski point back to that puffin infiltrating their link, he reacted louder than the others, not caring about alerting their leader of the breach. "Ey! Geh ou'a 'ere!"

Kowalski turned his head back as he walked to whisper a harsh warning to the puffin. "If you knew what was best for you, you'd leave at this moment and never look back."

"Why would I do that?" Hans asked, still following their line. "I was just getting here."

"If Skipper sees you…" Kowalski started.

"I want him to~" Hans said. "I want him to be seeing how I am not going any places."

"Skippah said you should be gone." Private told him. "You'll make him horribly angry if you're not."

"How I am loving his hot temperatures!" The puffin exclaimed.

Kowalski growled, having enough. He stopped walking and spun around. "LOOK you-"

At this moment in time, the line leader looked back to see his line had stopped following him. "What's the hold up, boys?" Skipper asked, unable to see the intruding puffin from behind his team.

Rico complained in gibberish, about to point to the Dane when he was stopped by a suddenly panicked analyst and his elbowing flipper. "Ey! 'Walski! Wha duh!" The weapons expert didn't understand why Kowalski stopped him from exposing the crazy puffin.

"There was a small but dangerous obstacle in the way, Skipper. We were just waiting for it to pass." Kowalski lied, looking unsure and rubbing his neck.

"Obstacle?" Skipper questioned. "Well where is it? My line waits at the mercy of no complication! Show me this nuisance!"

That was exactly what Rico wanted to do, show Skipper the annoying puffin so their leader could make it go away. But the analyst wouldn't have that, seemingly trying to protect the Dane for who knows what reason. Hasn't this puffin caused enough trouble for them already? Apparently not since the darn thing kept coming back to bite them straight in the-

Kowalski nodded, trying to think. "Ah…well, yes. The obstacle, you see, is…uh…"

Private knew what the tallest penguin was trying to do. They were good penguins and they knew that no one deserved Skipper's wrath and angry words. They would never wish such a fate upon anyone, not even the annoying and reoccurring character Hans. So he decided to help out, even though he didn't at all like the evil bird.

The private blinked and with a shrug picked up a nearby rock at their feet. He showed it to their leader, hoping his ploy would be bought. "This is it here, Skippah."

"A rock, huh?" Skipper took the rock from his soldier, looking it over. "Hm. Looks like we need more rock-climbing training. Good to know." The leader started walking again, satisfied with the four sets of footsteps trailing him. What a minute, four? Who on earth? Skipper halted mid-step with deathly narrowed eyes, causing Rico to walk into him from behind, causing a chain effect.

"Woah 'ere!" Rico bumped into their leader who had just stopped without warning.

Kowalski walked into the back of Rico who stopped in front of him. "What in the name of- Rico! Watch where you're stopping!"

"Wuh'nt me! Ah bump'n 'kipper!"

"Oh." Kowalski blinked. "Is something wrong, Skipper?"

"I know those footsteps…" Skipper murmured with vile hatred in his voice.

Private was surprised. He'd never heard that tone his leader's voice before. It was frightening. "Skippah?"

"Those icy…cold…footsteps…**_HANS!_**" Skipper shouted through a gritted beak before launching himself at the puffin.

"Skippah no!" Private cried as his commander and the Dane started a very heated fight.

"WOOHOO!" Rico cheered for their leader. Kowalski slapped the weapons expert's arm.

"Don't encourage this! They are evenly matched and one way or another somebody's going to get hurt!" The analyst crossed his arms, narrowed his eyes and added. "Let's just hope it's Hans."

"Uh huh." Rico agreed.

Private nodded. "Of course him."

"WHY…" Skipper threw his flipper at the puffin to catch him in the throat but his every fist was blocked in between his words. "…won't you…leave me…ALONE!"

"Aren't you not loving this, ja? I ammmm~!" Hans sang as he blocked another flipper coming his way.

"Why are you still here!" The leader demanded, throwing a kick at his opponent but the puffin flipped backwards last minute.

"I said I have come to see you! That is what I am doing! Am I _not_?" Hans connected a kick against the penguin's stomach, sending him staggering back.

Skipper groaned at the hit but pushed himself forward. The leader sidestepped to avoid a punch to his jaw. "Haven't you had enough of me already? Or are you just that lonely?"

"None of the above at all, Skipper!" Hans huffed, dodging more blows. "I could never get enough of you! You are so sweet and addicting! Hm, hm. And don't be being silly! I'm not lonely, I am having Dr. Blowhole to keep me the company!" The puffin said happily and snarled when a foot connected to his beak.

"Why aren't you with him then?"

"Because he- OW! Skipper!" Hans clutched his numbing beak and spoke through his wings. "Because that is what I am needing to talk about!"

"I don't want to talk to you!" Skipper said, sending another kick of the foot to the Dane's stomach, sending the puffin to the ground. The bird was down and didn't try to get up but the leader kicked him again, hard in the ribs. "I already talked to you back in Hoboken! That was the end of the conversation!"

"HAAH!" The puffin cried as his side screamed out at him in pain. "We could maybe be continuing it now!"

"How about we can't? Just get out of here before I kill you!"

"Woohoo!" Rico cheered from the sidelines. The violence was unbelievable! The threatening of demise was even more icing on the vehement cake.

The small Private gasped. He'd never heard Skipper threaten to kill someone before. There was no way they could let this go on! Could they?

Kowalski widened his eyes a bit too. The threat of death sort of came off as a red flag that maybe they should start to intervene. "Ah, Skipper? Perhaps we should leave this as it is."

"You should listen to your lieutenant, Skipper. You know you couldn't be killing a friend! It is so unlike you! So very unbecoming! What would our mommy think? Ma doesn't like it when we are doing the fighting together!"

"I'm not your friend…you…demented…DANE!" Skipper growled out as he pinned the bird, squeezing around his neck to choke him.

"Skippah stop!" Private cried out in alarm.

"I was never your friend!" The leader muttered to the gasping bird underneath.

"What were you then…?" Hans croaked out, and even though he couldn't breathe he grinned widely, knowing he'd caught the penguin right where he wanted him. The puffin got Skipper thinking about just what he wanted to and he knew he did. He could see it in the leader penguin's icy blue eyes.

Skipper paused and faltered back, realizing what he'd just done. He released the puffin. The leader shook his head to clear it of his anger and frustration induced fog. He sighed. "Just get out of here, Hans. You bring out the worst in me and I never want to see you again…"


End file.
